Fenway (formerly Hershey) is eating well (and very enthusiastically) and sleeping well, too, in her crate. She has a lot of energy, and we have had to learn how to get her enough exercise, but we could not be more happy with her.
She has a friend, Custard, a golden doodle, with whom she has playdates and gets lots of exercise, and she attends a doggie daycare (Frisky Dog in West Newbury) where she gets lots of good socialization and exercise. Since we live on a busy street, we fenced in our backyard. Fenway has room to run like crazy, and she is very fast.
Challenges: She is still learning about what are her toys and what are not (slippers, shoes, etc.), and she is also still learning about mouthing/biting. She likes to try to eat everything she finds on walks (pine cones, rocks, sticks, cigarette butts), so we spend a lot of time fishing things out of here mouth. She and her three cat “brothers” have not learned to co-exist peacefully yet. They tend to spend all their time upstairs, which we have blocked off from Fenway, and we miss them!
Successes: She is really smart, though, and has learned to sit, stay, lie down, drop and leave it. We don’t know if we would consider her housebroken yet, although she hasn’t had an “accident” since the first week after we adopted her. We just watch her constantly and take her out whenever we expect that she might need to go outside. We are hoping to get her to signal us more directly, but we have not figured that out yet. She is really very good in the car, and she likes to go for rides.
Health: She has had three visits to the vet so far, just for routine check-ups and vaccinations. She has been gaining weight, which she needed to do because she’d been so sick and was skinny when we adopted her. Now that she has all her shots and has gained some weight (she now weighs 27 lbs.), we are planning to schedule her spaying today for two weeks from now.
In sum, as I said above, WE LOVE HER! We could not be more happy with our experience at Northeast Animal Shelter, which we tell everyone every chance we get, and we could not be happier with Fenway. She is part of the family, and even though it’s only been a short period of time, we cannot imagine life without her.
