BHRR’s Royal Blu
March 13th, 2020

As I recover from some surgery had earlier this week, this boy has been the best hot water bottle, bed hogger, snuggle bug, drooler and companion a girl could wish for!

He was to have his own surgery on March 10th – bilateral entropion surgery along with a cherry eye yet his foster mama(FEEL better soon) took a nasty fall and is healing from a fractured arm.

So, he is back bunking back in with moi and doing fabu!

He has been learning manners as he clearly felt he was ‘king’ and he is coming along beautifully. He can still be grumpy to some of the other dogs yet, is learning to share wonderfully!

Everyone in our home must share the communal water bowls and he is now doing this nicely.

We do not reward inappropriate displays of behaviour and not long after his arrival, he wanted to rear up with SA type behaviours and that was a big no-no.

AND after only a few days of marking the correct behaviours, passively ignoring after a calming word/touch all inappropriate signs of behaviour; he is fantastic.

He bonded hard and fast to me and has been guided plus encouraged to learn to like his own company, to self-soothe, selt-comfort and to self amuse. We are not here to set him up for failure.

We are not here to create ‘monsters’ in manners or behaviours. SA is what my PhD is in and he is an excellent pupil.

We took him off of all behavioural modifcation medications shortly after his arrival to get to know and understand him and to best assess plus put together the right program for him.

He has not had any need to go back on any medications.

He reacts as we act to things as is often the case with most dogs.

He is quite chill and in any situation that he is exposed to that is new or foreign to him, we work to set him up for success and now, he just takes things in stride. Cautious yet curious which we want him to be interested in this big gorgeous world around us!

We have stress tested him also and his first reaction is avoidance…not fight….proving that the bite he had in his prior home was him escalating his communication re: his level of being uncomfortable with what is going on.

He has been in the kitchen as we have cooked, cleaned up etc. and he has been respectful, not one issue with resourcing.

The one thing that he is clear with his level of being uncomfortable is in the taking of his collar at times. He will mouth. Not bite, not growl, yet mouth. We do not push the boundary further at this time. We also have our theories on this yet, we are not setting him up for failure. We will get there….

When he communicates with his body language that he does not wish to have his collar touched, we just take a leash – many of them at easy reach, ask him to sit, hook him up and off we go. No issues….

I am extremely proud of his progress to date and we remain also waiting to hear from his ortho specialist re: those legs. He was to be back from Vacation in early March and are aware that he is a very busy man.

We will have BHRR’s Royal Blu’s eyes rescheduled ASAP.

AND thanks to all for their patience as we work to get our Flash Auction set-up. We have been very busy behind the scenes as well as mourning the death of two BHRR doggies….