08 February 2015

Introducing Oakley

This afternoon we adopted a dog. He's a 2 year old Boxer mix that we named Oakley. We got him from a rescue group who picked him up from the Ramona Shelter on January 10th (my birthday).  He had been at the shelter for a couple months before the rescue got him, and had been found as a stray before he was that the shelter. 


He's just what I've been searching for: a big, strong, dark colored dog with very short fur and floppy ears. And he has a cute tail too. He's a pretty color, black with brown around the edges, and just one small white spot on his chest. He's got a big round face, and the cutest little wrinkles on his forehead. He's a few inches shorter than Harley, but he has the same lean muscular build that Harley has. 


He plays rambunctiously with Harley (something we wanted), is already learning to come when we call him by his new name, seems to like our family a lot, is good in a crate, and seems to be totally house trained so far (knock on wood) and has been going in the dog run where we want the dogs to go and not out in the grass in the yard. 

He really loves to come up to us so we can pet him. He seems like a very sweet dog!  We're working to teach him not to get up on the couch -- he just wanted to snuggle on the couch with us last night after the kids were in bed. And he's gentle: he seemed a little hesitant to eat his new food we game him last night, so I put a handful of the dog food in my hand, and he gently ate several handfuls right out of my hand.  


He does bark a little when he and Harley start rough housing together out in the yard, so hopefully we can work on that over time just so it doesn't bother the neighbors. But other than that he doesn't seem noisy. Except for one situation so far: yesterday the dogs where out in the yard with us while we were doing some yard work, and Oakley must have never been around a trampoline before, because the boys went out and started bouncing and he was running around underneith the trampoline and barking as they bounced. We corrected him each time he barked at the bouncing, and hopefully he'll get used to that soon enough. It was pretty funny, though. :)

And it also seems that he's not used to a two story house. The rescue woman mentioned that he was being fostered in a single story home. So at first he was very nervous to walk up the stairs, but he did it with me coaxing him up.  After that he has seemed just fine going up and down on his own. But he also perks up his ears and makes a quiet little barking noise when he hears one of the kids running around upstairs, like he's trying to figure out where that noise is coming from. He'll get used to that. 


And late last night I took him on a walk around the neighborhood without Harley so I could see how he would do alone without any distractions.  The woman from the rescue group told us his foster said he pulled some on the leash, but the harness she had been using didn't work too well.  I used the new "martingale" collar (a nylon collar with one small section of chain that can become snug if a dog pulls) that we recently got for Harley that helps with pulling. I had to give him a few gentle corrections throughout the walk, but overall we had a very nice loose leash walk. It was great. 

And last night we meant to put him in the dog crate in our bedroom to sleep. But I accidentally fell asleep on the couch and never made it upstairs last night, and Oakley slept all night, curled up tight in a ball on the dog bed in the family room, without getting up once. 


Anyway, we're pretty pleased that we found him. He seems like a good fit for our family, and he already has a lot of good traits. It'll be fun to see what we learn about him over the next few days and weeks. 


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