Happy New Year!

It has been a very busy few weeks for me and Macho, which is why my blog posting has been slacking!

Macho and I had a really good Christmas. It was spent with family and friends, which is always nice. The week between Christmas and New Years was especially nice because I was able to work from home. This is what Macho enjoys the most. He is able to lounge around the house with me rather than by himself while I am at work.

Macho has been doing really great lately. He goes outside all the time these days and loves running around in the backyard and playing with me. It is, by far, the cutest thing I've ever seen. It makes me happy to know that he likes to run freely and enjoys being in an open space since a lot of his life was spend indoors. He has also been exclusively going poop outside! I know it's not a big thing for most dogs to do this, but since Macho didn't go outside at all for his first 5 years of life, he was quite used to going poop in the house. For the past month or so, he has not gone poop inside the house except for once when it looked like it wasn't a good poop that he could hold in. When he did this one, he also did it on his pee pad, so I know that he knew that he shouldn't go in the house but he just couldn't hold it.

As for the pee pads, they're still being used, but a lot less frequently! He uses them while I am not home because I know he has a problem holding it in. But while I am home it is very seldom that he uses them. He still doesn't understand that he should only pee outside, but again, for a dog that pee wherever he wanted in a house for 5 years, getting him to only pee on pee pads is a hard task. He also doesn't ever alert me when he wants to go out. Sometimes when I go near the back door he will perk up, but I think this is only because he thinks I might take him out. So whenever he does this I take him out in hopes that he realizes that he can do this whenever he has to pee and wants to go out.

A coworker of mine travels a lot for work and has a small 25 pound dog. He takes her to a doggie day care sometimes while he's out of town, so I offered to see how his dog and Macho get along. If they got along ok, I offered to watch her every once in a while so Macho has a friend during the day while I'm at work. The two dogs got together one night, but they completely ignored each other. Even when Kayla, my coworker's dog, was put right in front of Macho, they didn't even smell each other. I know that it's possible that Macho is afraid of my coworker since he is a male, so I decided to watch Kayla while I worked from home one day. They did alright, but not great. They didn't interact too much while inside, but when I would take them both outside, they would follow each other around and pee where the other had peed. One time while they were outside, Kayla was running around and tried to run up to Macho to play with him. She was running at him while giving out a low, deep bark, and I think it freaked Macho out. He started showing his teeth really bad, and that's when she got mad and started really barking at him. They got into a little fight, but when yelled at they both stopped. After that Macho was a little on edge the rest of the day. Whenever Kayla would approach me or come close to the couch, Macho would show his teeth a little bit. I want him to be ok with other dogs, but it seems like he is set in his ways and possessive. This is what we need to work on now!

Thursday will be the 2 year anniversary of when I adopted Macho! It seems like longer than that. Looking back at when I first adopted Macho, I can't believe how much he has changed for the better. Clearly there are things that aren't the greatest still, but to know that he came from such an awful place and is doing this good, I am proud of him. Here's to 2012 and hopes that Macho will have even more positive growth!