Well its been a little less than a week and Maggie is doing remarkably well. She doesn't like to go to the bathroom while being walked but does like her walks. She will go to the bathroom if we let her out in the back yard but she won't tell us that she needs to go. She doesn't like being crated much but won't fight too much about going into the crate as long as she is enticed with something good. Usually she decides after being left in the crate for a while (could be 1 minute, could be 20) that she wants out. She will hardly ever complain about being in the crate if we are in the same room, it is usually when we are in a different room that she will whine a little. She'll complain for a minute or two and then generally quiet down. Also, she will be content to be in her crate if she has been in there a while. ie, in the morning, she will wait for me to open the crate door rather than start whining to have it opened.

Other than keeping her in her crate, we will let her roam relatively free in the house, blocking off areas we specifically don't want her to go but also keeping an eye on her. I have also discovered that I can effectively block her off in an area adjacent to the living room to give her a little more room to play, eat and drink while not being watched. Occassionally but not very often, I have also leashed her and walked around with her in the house. I think the near future plan will be to get a dog door for the basement door, replace the outside gate latch (its a simple latch) and give her the basement/outside access for the days when we are at work, crating her at night. The further out future plan would to be get rid of the crate requirement entirely.

We took her to the dog park the other day and she had lots of fun. I think it will be a pretty regular event. We have also been walking her 2 or more times per day. Once in the morning, once in the evening and maybe shorter walks during the day.

Also, she is doing fairly well with our cat. Our cat has become a lot more comfortable with the dog. I have also found the joys of the squirt bottle. It has slowed down the chasing quite a bit. Our cat even decided she wanted to chase the dog last night so I'd call that quite a bit of progress. I think in the coming months there will be even more progress.

Maggie does need obedience training and she will get it but we are actually waiting because we will both be gone in a couple weeks for an entire week and don't want to have to miss a class with her.

She got a bath this weekend and did fairly well in the bath but wasn't entirely happy with getting wet and soapy. Today, she is going for a vet visit to get a general check up. Hopefully the vet visit will be better than the first vet visit we had with our cat (she was not a happy camper).

That is all for my update I am no longer worried about the dog/cat relationship. Our cat is doing fairly well although I think she would've enjoyed an older dog that didn't want to "play" all the time. I am glad though that it seems to be truly play for the dog rather than the dog wanting to attack.

Great to hear everything seems to be working out! Keep us posted.

any pics of your new one yet?

No new pics yet but we will get there once we get things unpacked

Nelie, I just wanted to thank you for posting your updates. We finally got our rescue cattle dog last night and it was a long night- not because Sanford (thinking about changing the name) was bad (he was actually very good in his crate), but we were just really anxious.

Our cat was really enjoying retirement until last night. We kept Sanford on the leash as we let him sniff around and after a poop/pee walk, we brought out Puck. I held her a few feet away from the dog (who was insanely curious) and gave her a few treats (she has a problem not eating when she's around other animals). She did fine. Too fine. As we were hanging out on the couch and Sanford was on the floor, Puck rolled around in front of him, teasing him. When he just kept looking at her in sheer amazement, she went for the kill. She crept up to him and actually challenged him and we got to hear Sanford's bark. She has been in exhile ever since.

Cattle dogs are very smart and they're herders, so I imagine there will be some herding going on. And I think Puck appreciates that she is dealing with an intuitive, intelligent dog and not the little dogs we would expose her to on previous occasions.

But anyway, I wanted to thank you for posting your experience- it's been a tremendous relief! And ditto on the spray bottle! One of his breed traits is to "nip" and we put a vinegar/water combo ina blue spray bottle and he is picking up on that really fast.

EDIT: He is also about 1.5 years old so he's essentially a puppy in a grown man's body. That was another thing that concerned us, was not being able to introduce him to Puck as a puppy. We'll see!

Jen,

I hope your Sanford and Puck get along well in the future.

Maggie is also partially a herding dog so maybe she is trying to herd Lola but she is definitely interested in playing. Another thing we discovered is that Maggie likes to escape outside. If we chase, she runs. We discovered though that if we run from her, she will chase us. Herding trait? possibly. Anyway, it makes it easy to catch her.

I still have no idea where the camera is at so no new pictures. When I find the box that has it, there will be some photos.

nelie~it sounds like your plan is working well with Maggie. Although I only crated Chico when we were away (at the time I was not working, so away was for an hour or two here and there) and again at night. He was very comfortable with the crate. When anyone was home, he had free rein of the house. We have a dog door, to so it made training pretty easy. Once we'd had him for about a year, we started to stop locking the crate at night and he would stay in all night and then open the door himself when he felt it was time to get up. Very quickly he learned that as soon as he let himself out, he could go outside and do his business. Soon after that, we simply never shut the door on the crate and he'd still go in there to sleep. At one point he stopped sleeping in there and we finally got rid of the crate. He sleeps on our bed now. I don't know if that's a good thing or not! LOL