Chester seems more comfortable with his new surroundings. He’s also found his bark, though it’s restrained. He doesn’t carry on as long as the previous dogs who have lived with me, and it seems to take a bit more activity outside to get his attention. He’s also minding better. Today each time he approached the pond I would tell him No!, and he listened. He does test the waters though, approaching the rock border around the pond repeatedly. I think he’s waiting for me to slip up and not say No! just once.<\/p>\n
This afternoon while I was preparing dinner, he sat in the kitchen on the edge of the stairs that lead down to the landing for the basement to watch and listen for the cat. I spent the morning correcting him when he ventured to the landing to spy on the cat below through the basement door perforated sheet metal . Hopefully he’s beginning to get the message.<\/p>\n
Chester and I spent quite a bit of time outdoors today walking around the yard. In the morning I kept him on the leash because of yesterday’s fishing episode. By the afternoon, there were no more incidents, so I tried it with no leash and he behaved. Several times during the day I put him into his crate, extending the length of time until he was in there for 1 1\/2 hours. This is in preparation for when I go to work tomorrow. I’ll be gone from the house for about 5 1\/2 hours, and I want him to become accustomed to being in the crate when both Daniel and I are away. When he was safely in the crate, I’d open the basement door to allow the cat to come upstairs. The furthest she ventured was the kitchen. At one point I put Chester outside and carried the cat into the living room. She took one look at the crate, sniffed the air and ran upstairs to the bedroom. I closed the door behind her and left her up there for three hours. When I checked on her, she was sound asleep on the bed.<\/p>\n
When Daniel came home from work, Chester greeted him at the back door then turned around and disappeared into the living room. He returned in a few seconds with his baby in his mouth and offered it to Daniel.<\/p>\n
I remain hopeful that in the not too distant future, everyone (dog and cat) will settle down and we’ll become one big happy family, if not happy then at least tolerant.<\/p>\n
O.P.W.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chester seems more comfortable with his new surroundings. He’s also found his bark, though it’s restrained. He doesn’t carry on as long as the previous dogs who have lived with me, and it seems to take a bit more activity outside to get his attention. He’s also minding better. Today each time he approached the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts-and-refledctions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.opwfredericks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.opwfredericks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.opwfredericks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.opwfredericks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.opwfredericks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.opwfredericks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.opwfredericks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.opwfredericks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.opwfredericks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}