Update on

This morning, Sadie literally crawled into my lap. She wanted to be held, she wanted to snuggle, and a few minutes later after I had put her down, she put her paws on me on my lap, asking for more attention. She has asked for attention before, but has never been so comfortable touching me and has never been so relaxed while being held. She was just soaking it up.

She's been with us just over a month now, and in foster care since mid-October (with Melissa, another foster home). She is so wonderful, we love her so much. She's doing great with her training, and her reactions to sounds in the environment have decreased to almost zero (meaning she is not as vigilent and nervous out in public). At 6:30am we were having a romp on the front lawn, and she was offering me sits and earning treats-- this setting is not one she could have done that in 3 weeks ago! Hooray for clicker training.

Here we are for a few minutes in the kitchen:



This video is from weeks ago, when Sadie was just learning the concept of clicker training. We like to start with something super simple, and here we are teaching her to touch a dot in order to get a click-treat. The point is to really teach her that this is a fun game she can win, that we are interacting, and that I am waiting for her to offer me behaviors.

Update on Feb. 1st

Sadie continues to do really well. She's offering us the "sit" and the "down" on a regular basis, and looks so proud of herself when she does.

We have received at least 2 applications for her, and as soon as the first one came in the applicants looked great on paper. The homecheck is being done this week and they will meet Sadie on Saturday. They and we are crossing our fingers that their Sheltie gets along well with her (I think she will, Sadie is great with other dogs).

So she MAY be going to her forever home soon. But if you're here on this blog because you're looking for a Sheltie to adopt, please, go to the Sheltie Rescue website (www.adoptasheltie.com) because we have other Shelties that need placing, and we also never know what we might have soon. We really appreciate having great applicants in the wings so we can make an introduction (and hopefully a great match) as soon as we have a dog come in that may meet the applicant's criteria.

We hope we're close to a very happy ending for Sadie. And I just want to thank and acknowledge the many volunteers who got her to this point-- especially Kathy Parsons and Melissa Henning. But there were others, too, including the network I still don't fully understand that rallied to help these dogs when the government decided to close down the puppy mill Sadie came from. Thank you, thank you, to everyone who formed the chain to get Sadie out of that hellhole and into a wonderful permanent and loving home.