Rev is an awesome little dog. He's about a year and a half old now (I think?) and a Yorkie. His parents were a little worried that he might be unhappy for the weekend since they said he isn't very social. The last time he was dog sat for a weekend he didn't like the resident dog (a young, large breed dog who wanted to play all the time) and he hid in his kennel for the weekend, poor puppy.
After racing home from Baxter's first outdoor distance skills class I got home just as they were pulling up to drop him off. Instead of just tossing everyone in the house together and hoping for the best, I took the boys for a walk together since Spencer and Baxter can have issues with strange dogs. This is one thing that I like from when I used to watch the Dog Whisperer (one of the few things actually.) It's neutral territory, the dogs are focusing on something other than new space and checking each other out. There shouldn't be issues with resource guarding, and they get to expend some energy before actually meeting the new dog off leash.
We met up with my sister and her dog while walking, so Rev got to meet all kinds of new dogs. Instead of coming right back to my house, we introduced the dogs in her back yard. Spencer is usually very snarky and defensive with new dogs and wants nothing to do with them. He was a little snarky with Rev but he was playing! Rev has excellent dog skills for a young guy. He would bounce and play bow at Spencer and if Spence snarked at him he'd give him a break for a minute but not snark back. He was really unruffled by Spencer and Spencer's behavior improved dramatically. It was nice to see that there is the possibility with Spencer and Baxter didn't actually care at all (he's mellowed out a lot and gotten much more social since we started agility.)
It was a good weekend, our first outdoor agility trial went well, but more on that later!
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