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BackNorman
Adopted
Description
Male, 5 years, pit bull X
Norman is a huge love muffin and follows me everywhere I go. He loves people and as much attention as you have to offer! He seems to be the type of dog that picks his one very special person who he prefers if they are available, but still loves everyone else in the family. He loves to play rough (fun) but also chill for hours on end. We have left him alone and loose in house for 2 or 3 hours with resident pup and he had no problems with any destruction or separation anxiety. We are working on crate training for sleeping and while he didn’t love it one little bit, it did not take him long to catch on that he goes in for night-nights but gets tons of love and attention all day and evening until that time so I think that could be easily continued OR I am positive he would be happy to sleep in bed with you Norman is doing very well with house training with only a couple of pee accidents and no poo accidents at all. He does occasional bark but he is not a barker. Also, he is well on his way to a very good sit, down, stay and wait. He is not super food motivated but we have been able to fatten him up a bit so that he is a good healthy weight now. He is very gentle taking treats and has no issues with food or toy aggression. As for other dogs, after slow and careful introduction, he is good with resident pup who is fully aware of the rules and his place and won’t hesitate to let Norm know how things work around here (even though he is only 12 lbs) and Norman respects him. He has met one family friend pup and was a little intense but it went ok with proper, slow introduction. With other dogs when you’re out and about, he needs a fair bit of work. He immediately gets intense and tries to pull quite hard to approach very fast and always face to face and often hackles up and continues to be heavily distracted by the dog until we are well past it. There have been no incidents of growling or barking as he approaches so it is not too scary or hard to handle, but I do keep him moving so that things don’t have a chance to go south. I have changed from one long walk in a no pull harness with first half a faster paced no-nonsense walk to tucker him out a bit mentally and physically and the last half, long loose leash. It wasn’t stopping his ‘interest’ in other dogs, so now I am trying three 20 minute no nonsense walks with a martingale collar in hope of him learning to become at least somewhat indifferent to other dogs and keep his focus on me. Pulling has almost stopped and interest in passing dogs is much less intense, so this seems to work better for him. That all said, his recall is very good! He is in no way able to go off leash in a dog area any time soon, but I have been doing it on a 30’ leash in an area where the coast is clear of other dogs to test his recall and he is wonderful! I think that he would be just fine on a hike where he is not stuck constantly running into tons of other dogs. Honestly I don’t think meeting other dogs out in a dog park/off leash area is or will ever be enjoyable for him and that’s ok!
Norman is being fostered in Calgary.