Bandit's Foster Home Becomes His Permanent Home!

Bandit's foster home failed fostering their fist time out - they are keeping Bandit! His foster mom says:

"Bandit is continuing to come out of his shell, he's such a little monkey. He is still working on his man issues: lately his response is sitting down, barking and howling. Pete's step dad came to visit this past weekend and that's how Bandit greeted him, but within 10 minutes he was up in his lap! (I asked him if he wore sausage cologne to make Bandit more comfortable!)


We were supposed to start school last weekend, but my trainer had the stomach flu so we will be starting this Saturday. He is a piece of cake to work with inside and I've been able to do quite a bit of training, but outside he is completely not interested. He is terrible on leash, and actually goes insane when I get the leash out. Until he learns some better leash manners our dog walker is just bringing her dog over to play with Sky and Bandit in the yard.

He and Sky will continue to go to daycare, but he's getting a little bratty there. He's getting a little nippy with the smaller dogs (which is kind of funny considering he lets our cat boss him around...hmmm, maybe that's why...he's taking it out on the little dogs). When Sky gets tired she goes to the "geriatric room" and passes out on the futon; when Bandit gets tired he hides under the futon and waits for dogs to run by and reaches out and grabs their legs!! He's a little stinker!

Speaking of stinker, we have (seemingly) gotten to the bottom of the middle of the night visits. We tried ignoring him a couple of nights ago and he was so good, just went back downstairs. But he was moving around a lot and we could hear his tags jingling so Pete went down to check on him and the poor thing had the runs. :( He was soooo upset and Pete felt terrible! Needless to say, the next 4 times he came to get us that night we didn't ignore him!

I gave him homemade anti-runs meals and he seemed to be feeling better, so last night when he came to get us 2 hours after going to bed we ignored him...and, he came to curl up on the floor right next to me for the rest of the night. This morning Pete found another pile of presents in the bathroom (at least he's polite enough to go on the tile!). So, he's been getting homemade meals again and will continue to for several days and it looks like I'll have to try a different food. Poor baby, hopefully once we get his bowels happy he'll sleep better.

We're just smitten with Bandit and thrilled to death that he's here with us. We will work hard over the next several months on obedience training. I've already talked to my trainer about trying to work with both of the dogs in harness, but we'll probably wait until he's better on leash. Hopefully by summer I'll be able to start with the two of them and be ready for next winter!"

Congratulations to Bandit and his new family!