Happy Two Years, Macho!

Today is the big day! Two years ago today I adopted Macho from the Dearborn Animal Shelter. Macho really wanted to celebrate his day in the best way he knows how... sleeping!

I swear, there is a dog under there, but you wouldn't know it. The only hint is that one ear poking out. Macho stayed in the bed the entire time I woke up and got in the shower. Even when I got out he continued to lay in bed.








Then he decided to poke his head out so that I could snap a quick picture. Being the mean mom that I am, I forced him to get up and go outside. But then he went right back to bed to sleep. Normally I don't allow this, but I figured he deserves it on his big day!

Once I was ready for work, I peeked in the bedroom to find Macho just hanging out. He definitely knows how to spend his day. But he made me feel a little guilty leaving him alone. Tonight I will have to spoil him a little more :)

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!

Macho's Snow Experience

We finally got a little bit of snowfall here in Michigan this week! It has been very warm, and then all of the sudden I woke up on Wednesday and there was a tiny bit of snow on the ground. Macho has never seen snow, so I was really excited to see how it went. I was always afraid to take him out in the snow when we lived on a very busy road just in case he freaked out and got loose. However, it wasn't a very exciting experience!



Since it had rained the night before, the snow was kind of frozen and crunchy. Macho ran out of the door really fast, and then was surprised when the snow was on the deck and the grass. He almost immediately stopped and was walking very curiously on the crunching snow. He wouldn't run around and play, he was just kind of standing there and would walk a few feet every once in a while. I guess I will just have to wait until there is a lot of snow to see how much fun he has!


Also, do you like his sweater? Because I made it! Thankfully I finished knitting it on Monday because he definitely needed it only a few days later. He wears it outside, but once he is inside, he doesn't love wearing it. He will sneak it off while I am not looking :)

We're Still Here!

I realize that I have been slacking lately on posting and reading other blogs. But I swear I have a good reason!

This has been a super busy few weeks for me and Macho. A few days after I posted my last update, my boyfriend Nick and I decided to go our separate ways. Unfortunately, that meant that Macho and I had to move, again! Macho was finally getting used to his new home when he had to go through moving all over again.

I was very worried about Macho and how he would react to moving after going through it only 2 months prior. But the number one thing that I was looking for in a new house was an enclosed back yard for Macho. I found a house not too far away that had that and a few other things I was looking for, so I decided to move there. To my surprise though, Macho has been doing really great. He has had a few accidents causing me to have to hide an ottoman from him to get him to stop peeing on it, but other than that he has been doing really well.

The backyard has been amazing for him. Not only is it bigger for him to run in, but it has a gate the entire way around so that I don't have to hold the leash while we are out there. I was still hooking the leash to his harness as there's a few spots in the fence where he could get under and I wanted to have a way to grab him really quickly if he went near that. But after a few weeks of him only paying attention to me and the cars driving by on the street, I realized that I have nothing to worry about. So earlier this week I took him out without the leash hooked to him, and he was like a free dog! He runs around, mostly in circles, and plays his little game with me. He gets so excited when I pull out the harness because he knows that he gets to go outside. This morning I took a video of him getting excited to go out, and then of him running around. It wouldn't let me save the entire video at once since it is big, so I separated it into two videos. My flip camera is boxed away somewhere, so when I find it I will make a better video and crop out Macho going to the bathroom and make the second one the right side up!

Macho's Training Update

Thanks everyone for your comments on my last post about Macho's training! He is still doing very well and getting better each day.

I'm happy to report that Macho has only been showing small signs of dominance! There are times when Nick calls Macho but Macho doesn't come. I'm not sure why he does it, but he likes to run into the bedroom and lay in the cage. Nick isn't doing anything bad, just sitting on the couch and calling Macho to come sit over by him. Macho should have learned by now that if he runs in the cage, Nick will come in there with the leash and make him come out. But he still runs in there occasionally.

Other than that, the training is still going well. Macho is getting better at "stay". Our trainer wants Macho to stay for his food when it is put on the floor. The problem is that Macho isn't like most dogs who eat food the second that they see it. He usually waits for me to put in on the floor and sit down. Sometimes he even waits a few minutes before going to eat. Finally this morning I decided that I would just stand there while holding his food bowl and calling him. He actually came over and stood there waiting for me to put the bowl down. I said "stay" and put it down, and then let him go eat it, however, he was never trying to go to the food. I'm going to keep doing this and see if it helps Macho to get more excited about eating. I know, it's crazy to have a dog that doesn't want to eat!

Now that Macho goes outside, I want to take a video of him playing out there with me. It's pretty adorable to see him running around in the grass. Especially knowing that for the first half of his life he never got to go outside or play at all. I will post a video when I finally take one!

Re-training Macho

I've been MIA lately as we've been busy making Macho a better dog!

About two weeks ago, I was leaving the house and Macho was laying on our bed. He isn't allowed to be in our bedroom while we are not home, so I told him to get off the bed. He really wasn't happy about this! I am usually able to say "Off" and point to the floor to get him to get off the bed, but when I did this, he just sat there. I reached down to pet him, and he tried to bite me! Per our dog trainer's advice, I am supposed to growl at him when he is misbehaving, so I did that. Sometimes all I have to do is walk behind Macho and he will walk away because he doesn't like to have his back to you. So I did that, and he turned around and started showing his teeth to me. Clearly, I was not allowing this behavior. He stopped, walked over to my pillow and peed on it! I couldn't believe he did that.

The next day I got home from work and took Macho out as usual. He didn't pee, but since I still have the pee pads out for while I am at work, I thought he just didn't have to go. I brought him in, and I heard him walk down the hallway. He went right into our bedroom and peed on our bed again. I decided it was time to take some action.

Our dog trainer came out for a visit last week and said that Macho is starting to show dominance now that he is more comfortable with us. We have a lot of new exercises to work with him on. However, the biggest is that he is no longer allowed to sleep in bed with us or be on the bed in general! This made us sad because he loves laying in bed and cuddling with us. But I know that it's something we have to do to help him get better and teach him that we are the leaders, not him. The first night he wasn't happy about sleeping in the cage, but since that first night he has gone in the cage without a fight. Last night I laid in bed reading a book, and he went right into the cage and laid there the whole time.

So far the exercises have seemed to help, and Macho is showing less dominance by the day. We're supposed to continue this for a month and then we can readdress him sleeping in bed with us. Let's hope it all works out for Macho!

Macho's New Home!

I haven't been posting on the blog for a while since we have been moving! It's been a little over 2 weeks since the move, and we are finally getting settled in.

Macho has been great during the move. The first few days were tough as he didn't know where to go to the bathroom which caused a few accidents. But since we have a fenced in backyard, we can take him out a lot more. He is slowly catching on that he is supposed to relieve himself outside instead of inside. He still has the pee pads to go on for moments when he is too impatient, but for the most part he has been waiting for us to take him out.

Last night was the biggest breakthrough in the house training. We had a few friends over to watch football, and Macho decided to hang out in the bedroom as more than 3-4 people in one room makes him a little nervous. He was in the bedroom from noon until about 10:30 at night. I had checked on him frequently, and I noticed that he really hadn't moved from the bed the whole time. Once everyone was gone around 10:30, Macho hopped out of bed and came to me. I knew he would have to go out, so I got his leash and put it on him. Usually in the morning when we do this, he can't hold it in and usually goes on the pee pad. I thought he would do it this time, but he let me take him out and he waited until he was outside to go! I am excited for him that he's learning.

We moved in on a Monday and on that next Saturday we lost power during a pretty bad storm. We didn't get power back until Wednesday, so there were a few days that we were copping without having a refrigerator, TV, or even light once it started to get dark around 8:30 at night. Macho started to get sick of it too, as we weren't as lazy as we usually are when we don't have a TV to watch. I snapped this picture of him, and it looks like he is adjusting well to his new home :)