My wife and I just adopted a shelter dog this afternoon. Added Photo

[MineralMan]

44. Thanks.

He's getting his first chance to run loose in the house this afternoon. The kitties were napping in a couple of rooms, so I closed the doors and let Dude out of his kennel. He promptly found one of the squeaky chew toys my wife picked up today for him, and is happily carrying it around and bringing it up to show me as I sit at my desk.

More opportunities to reinforce the Sit and Stop commands and to learn a new one, which is Drop it. Since he can't take a treat with a chew toy in his mouth, he learned that one quickly, too. We're making good progress, and he has shown no interest in chasing the cats at all. It may well be that there were cats in his previous home, since he just stops and looks at them.

I had him on a short leash earlier, and introduced him to one of the cats - the one that's not really much afraid of dogs. They looked at each other from a couple of feet apart, and I got Dude to Sit while that was going on. We're not going to let him have unleashed access to the cats for awhile, yet, and I want the Stop command to be obeyed 100% of the time before we start that experiment.

The cats already know the house, and have many hiding and escape places, so it's all going to work out. But, I expect some time to pass before they all co-exist peacefully and without drama. It'll happen, though.

Obedience training is the first order of business, though.