December 18, 2010 Mika gets a wire crate & gets muddy

We have 4 malamutes staying with us now - Sammy, a foster dog, is temporary until we can find another foster home, and Tasha and Stony, our two adopted malamutes.  Unfortunately, Sammy seems to be quite dog reactive and already had one skirmish with Stony leaving her with a few wounds.  Mika also seems to quite reactive and when she visited us earlier in September she rushed out the door as Katy was going out and landed right on Stony.  Fortunately there was not much damage to either dog during this short skirmish.  In general Tasha and Stony get along, however, once in a while Stony will jump on Tasha for unknown reasons and we have to be watchful when they are together.

Long story short - we have to do a lot of dog shuffling between outside, the garage and one of the inside bedrooms for feeding and backyard visits.

We set up a wired crate in a closet in my office work room for Mika and she took to it right away, carrying dog toys in with her whenever she found new ones.

Today, I also took Mika for a walk to the new strawbale house that has recently installed a 6 foot chainlink fence around the 1 acre property.  Because she pulls so hard and is hard to control on a leash I wanted to let her off leash to see whether she would come when called for treats.  At first she ran around the property exploring the boundaries, in the process getting quite muddy.  But she would come back to me eventually and I gave her treats several times when she did so.  The new fence had not been secured to the ground at the bottom and it might have been possible for her to crawl under.  Fortunately she did not try this. After 1/2 hour of this, the owner of the strawbale house complained that she was making mud tracks on his new concrete driveway and was hesitant to let her use this yard again.  I will have to look for another place where I can continue to test her recall when she is off leash.