12-21-09 Monday Update

River has been doing great settling right into our routine. He is amazing how he copes with his blindness. It took me 2 days but I trained him to go down the stairs. River was terrified at first but will do anything for cheese. By placing cheese tidbits on each stair he eventually went down. Now he cautiously feels his way down with his feet. I am going VERY slow as I do NOT want him to have a bad experience and fall. Now he doesn't need the cheese on the stairs but I am giving him a tidbit for every stair he does. Tomorrow it will be every other stair and by the weekend I hope to have him just getting the treat at the bottom...but what I have learned over the years in dog training (and this is dogs with no special needs) that sometimes you have to go backwards in order to take leaps forward.
River is progressing quite well on house training. He is about 80% trained and the 20% accident rate is mostly due to me not paying attention to his signals...it has been over 8 years since I potty trained a dog and I am a bit rusty :) On a very positive note his accidents are truly accidents and he has absolutely no marking behaviors. Pretty impressive for an adult male dog who just got neutered last week and has not been an indoor dog.
River's hips are weak but he gets around great on Carpet, wood/vinyl floors are are harder but strategically placed non slip throw rugs work great and he is so smart about anchoring a foot on the rug to help himself stand.
We did introduce him to my mom's un-neutered male dog this weekend and although they tolerated each other I would think it is best that River goes in a home with a neutered male or female dogs. River does really well with my neutered male and female dog. He is respectful of my old dog when he gives him a little warning growl and tries to snuggle with my female.
Today will be the first day that we have to leave River home during the day and I will report later on how that goes. He really loves being with people as much as possible. Snuggling is his favorite thing to do besides eating. Considering he is only 86lbs and as tall as my dog who is 108 lbs I think he didn't get much food for a long time. He will need to be kept very lean, almost skinny to help his hips but the smallest little tidbit of a treat is exciting to him.
River is also learning to play with toys which is pretty cute. He loves dumping the whole toy basket over and picking through the toys.
I will post some new pictures later.