It's been two weeks since I brought him home and eight days since I ✨officially✨ adopted him, so meet Chester!
Chester is a young adult pitbull boy from the local shelter. I wanted an active dog who would play well with my mom's Doberman/Husky and boy did I get what I asked for 😅
Thoughts and feelings and pictures behind the cut
He was brought in as a stray in October 2023 and stayed in the kennels until he finally got a foster home last month. He's energetic, mildly fear reactive, anxious, a little resource guard-y, mouthy/nippy, has no impulse control, and pulls like a freight train.
He's also lived for 19 months in a very large very busy county animal shelter so precisely 0% of that is surprising.
He's incredibly sweet, wildly cuddly, and hugely dog social -- a saving grace, bc it means my partially disabled self can take him to the dog park every morning and let him wear himself out. So far so good --I'm very lucky to be a short drive from a fantastic huge dog park with a strong group of welcoming regulars. (Not what I would necessarily recommend, but I realized he was massively lonely AND physically under stimulated, so it was worth a shot. [It turns out I was also lonely and physically understimulated and the dog park has been good for me, too. Shh.])
Right now I'm focusing on building our relationship and figuring him out while setting some basic ground rules. (Like, I'll play fetch with you, but you can't bite my hand when I pick up the ball level of ground rules lol.) I don't think it's fair to ask a lot of him while he's still decompressing, but I've been sprinkling in some *very* basic obedience moments.
Even with the little amount of time and training, he's getting better -- he can now handle being in the yard by himself most of the time, and he doesn't cry when I leave him in the crate for work. But he's also gotten *much* mouthier -- who's to say whether that's getting comfortable with the or weaning off the propanolol.
Oh, right -- the shelter had him on propanolol to "control anxiety symptoms" and one worker told me "if he's off his meds he'll just lose it sometimes when he gets riled up". My vet and I agree that's probably just, y'know, energetic dog in the shelter, so we're weaning him off and letting him get used to a home and then we'll discuss proper behavior meds if we need to.
So, anyway! Decompressing, setting some ground rules, redirecting to toys, learning dog park manners. Next week we have our first session with a trainer and I plan to focus first on safety. The door bolting and excitement biting have to go ASAP.
In the future, I'd like to get our CGC and do some hiking/camping. I want to get him safe around the livestock so he can feed horses with me. A sport might be fun? We'll see.
I still miss Elphie, but as my vet said, I needed a dog who was totally different and who would drag me out of the house. Chester is perfect for that and I love him so much already. I think he's gonna be a really fun dog.
Have some pictures :)
