The 1st Night and Day

Bring a new dog into  our home with an existing cat was always going to be a little unnerving and we had the added issue that Roscoe did not know his name so we had a hard time catching his attention but the introduction went as smoothly as could be expected. After we had installed some baby gates (DIY is not our strong point) we let Roscoe explore the living room whilst Toots (our cat sniffed and snorted from behind the safety of 2 baby gates!

He charged about like a bull in a china shop ad immediately took up residence on our sofa and in particular in MY seat!! We decided this was the perfect opportunity to teach "off" as although we wanted to share our home and indeed our sofa and we are by no means into the whole dominance theory we do want to have a dog which will obey our desire to get them off the sofa when required!

This involved chicken, and as we said Off we threw some cooked chicken on the floor Roscoe soon got the hang of it and was happy to leave the sofa when told "off"

The chicken also brought Toots into the living room thus killing two birds with 1 stone and within an hour of being in the house we had harmony - all be it at a distance but Toot and Roscoe were in the same room. Far more than we could have hoped for, and all due to Toots having an escape route and Roscoe having the Baby gate as  barrier and of course Cooked Chicken

 

 

The 1st night Stuart stayed with Roscoe until well after 1am just playing with him and continuing with the "off" command and also teaching him his name by speaking it in a really happy happy voice and when he responded the trusty chicken was administered! At bed time no fuss was made Stuart just put the tv off shut the baby gate switched the lights off and came to bed, and not a peep came from Roscoe the whole night Fabulous...except for the fact that I lay awake worrying as there was not a sound!!