Exceedingly Mundane

Meet the newest member of our family – Beau!

We went to the foster home yesterday afternoon where Beau (formerly Sonny Boy) has been living for the last several months. The couple there obviously loved Beau, but I think they could tell how much we loved him right away, and that we’d give him a good home. So, we loaded Beau up in the kennel and brought him home!

Beau is about 2 years old and was found at a penal farm in a nearby town. The foster family that rescued him has had him for six months and Beau was used to being with a lot of other dogs, so that may be a bit of an adjustment for him, as he’ll be an only dog and an only child here. But, we think he’s going to enjoy it quite a bit!

Beau is very skinny and seems to not be very hungry. We’re going to definitely work on that. 🙂 He’s a little hyper, but he’s already calming down and is settling in very well to his new surroundings. Beau has already learned about the leash and is not jumping as much as he was when we first met him. He’s very lovable, and loves for us to pet him and play with him. Beau doesn’t seem to be very used to staying in a house, so we think he’s probably been an outside dog most of his life. He will have the kitchen, laundry room and breakfast room for his inside space (areas where there is tile, not carpet). He’s already learning his boundaries and that he’s not supposed to come into the rest of the house, even though we go there. He’s crate trained and pretty much house trained from what we can tell. We keep offering for him to go outside and he’s been going to the bathroom outside so far, and we’ve had no accidents, which is good! He went to the door last night one time to let me know he needed to go out, so I hope that’s going to work well. I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

Beau seems to have a lot of natural instincts and Tim thinks he would make a great hunting dog. He has the natural retrieving instinct, as we had hoped. We were tossing a toy to him last night and he got it and bounded back with it to start it all over again. 🙂

Beau did really well his first night. He whimpered once or twice then we didn’t hear a peep out of him the rest of the night. We are going to keep chairs up in the doorway so he learns to stay in the kitchen at night and not roam around the house. He did great last night, and was so excited to see us get up this morning! We took him for a long walk (our regular 2 mile walk we do in our subdivision) and he, of course, LOVED that! He’s going to have a great time going on walks, which will be good for him and good for us.

We have a lot of work to do with Beau, but I think he’s going to make a wonderful addition to our little family. He seems to be a good dog and very smart, so I think we will have him trained in no time. He is already responding to his new name, as well as the other things we are teaching him.

Oh, and we’ve learned a couple of other things about Beau. #1, he doesn’t like cats. At all! He barks and growls and wants to tear them apart. We had a cat on our back deck this morning and Beau starting barking like an intruder was in the house. He should make a great watchdog! #2, Beau doesn’t seem to like males, either canine or human! He loves Tim, but we’ve introduced him to two of our neighbors and while he loves the women and goes right to them, he’s barked or growled at the men. Same for male dogs. He encountered a female dog on our walk and he was fine, just attentive. A male dog made him bark though.

OK, click the extended entry to see a few more pictures. Warning, there will be plenty of pictures of Beau posted on this blog in the future!!!