Report on the first day visit

This will become a foster care blog again, someday. For the moment it looks like it is a doggie adoption blog.

So CD (the Cattle Dog) tends to be dog aggressive, but it is clear that she is not a confident alpha, pack-leader dog. It is more of an anxious aggression.

Anyway, DCS (Dauchsund/Cocker Spaniel) just doesn't seem to care much about all that stuff, although he is not going to be pushed around. I don't know what started it, but they got into a tight corner and suddenly there was snarling, then wimpering. DCS was biting CD in the butt. We got them separated and the Cattle Dog tried to make nice. DCS didn't seem all that interested -- there were still smells to be catalogued. CD finally sulked back to her doggie bed.

I actually think this is a good sign. What is appears we have on our hands is a new dog who is not interested in being bossy, doesn't object to CD "herding" him around to a certain extent, but is willing to bite her in the butt if she gets too aggressive. Otherwise the two dogs got along fine: inside and out.

Andrew is still convinced that if the dog goes downstairs (our house has a ground floor with our bedroom and the guest bedroom and a nice, finished basement where Andrew and Brian's bedrooms are along with a large rec room, a bathroom and the laundry room) his cat will get upset and run away. So tonight at least Brian is sleeping in the guest room with the dog. Hubby took the plastic box in which I keep quilt pieces to work as a step to make it easier for the dog to get on and off the bed. If we keep this dog I see a slow accumulation of foot stools in our house. As far as I can tell this dog is about as good a dog for Andrew's cat as we can hope to find. He is short and slow, doesn't jump well, and is mostly uninterested in the cats.*

Anyway, I am thinking about moving Brian upstairs to the guest room permanently. I wrote to the family developer to see if they would have any objections to the next kid being in the basement with Andrew. It is the smallest bedroom and the youth will almost certainly understand that as a status issue, though maybe less so if we explain that it was Brian's room for years.

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*Well, except for the kitten, about whom DCS seems a bit confused. First, they are both males; second, they are both neutered; third, they are from different species. Okay, I get that it is a dominance thing, but it is a very strange dominance thing.