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| MEET: RUCA => Penny |
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| STATE: Western NY AGE: 1 1/2 years DOB: 6/1/07 WEIGHT: 64 pounds SEX: Female NEUT/UTD: Yes/Yes COAT COLOR: Brindle DOCKED TAIL: Yes CROPPED EARS: No CHILDREN UNDER 4: No CHILDREN OVER 4: Age 8 and up SEPARATION ANXIETY: Unknown OTHER DOGS: Yes CATS: Unknown CRATE TRAINED: Yes HOUSE TRAINED: Yes LEASH TRAINED: Yes OBEDIENCE TRAINED: Basics Only MICROCHIPPED: No ADOPTION FEE: $300 |
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| UPDATE 4/22/10 - Ruca / Penny, has done great. She has everyones routine down and is very comfortable with her surroundings. She decided that she did not like her special bed in our bed room for her complete nights sleep. She prefers a large love seat in the family room. She waits til we all go to bed, and then claims it for her own. I will come home sometimes late at night, and she will just peek over the arm to confirm it is me and then it is back to sleep. We have gotten her a nice raised feeding station that contains her mess as well. She loves to play ball, and always releases the ball so we can throw it for her, very polite. She is well trained on her leash. She loves our 3 kids, and will try to get them to play with her at all times. If they sleep in, she will sneak upstairs and pounce on them until they get up.
She is very healthy, but her stomach does not tolerate spaghetti sauce, we found that out the hard way. She loved Christmas morning, and now we must be careful about wrappped gifts lying around, she loves to open them. She is a great addition to the family and we love her. UPDATE 10/26/09 - Ruca, continues to do very well. She follows commands in the house very well and does well outside in the country well off leash also. She continues to love to play ball, especially soccor. She prefers water from the creek over the bowl, likes to pick fruit with her lips, like berries, when she sees us eating them recently she decided to pick some grapes, just the ripest ones you know. We had to discourage her from doing this as they are not healthy for dogs. She wakes up every morning like it is Christmas and wants everyone up with her. She will go room to room trying to wake people up. Needless to say, doors are closed early in the morning to avoid the wrath of Ruca. She is really a part of the family. The kids look for her when they get home from school and she looks for them when we get back from the country. She knows not to get onto the furniture, unless the person there has a blanket. She then will crawl up onto the blanket. Unfortunately, she knows what the alarm clock is and if that is not enough to get us moving in the morning the sound of her stretching, yawning, shaking her ears and crawling out of bed remind you had better move or she is going to be in your face in short order. She is very loyal and loving and all Boxer. UPDATE 7/28/09 - Ruca has completed her obedience training course. She loves to play ball with the kids, soccer or fetch. When we are picking berries she will help herself also. She only pulls the ripest ones off of the bushes. She also sneaks into my vegetables when I bring them in from the garden. I have found her eating peas or nibbling some fresh cut basil. She likes to get up early and have her breakfast, if she is ready to play and the kids are still asleep, she will go to their beds and try to get them up by pushing her muzzle on the necks and snorting. She loves the beach, she can run off leash thru the water. The only problem is she loves to roll in fish! Phew! She is full of energy and personality. UPDATE 6/17/09 - Ruca has come a long way over this last month. She no longer barks at people when they come over. She is very polite and lets us go out the door before her. She no longer barks at dogs as they go by, she just jumps up and down. She sits, lies down, comes and stays on command. My favorite is that she releases when she is playing ball with us. I no longer use the gentle leader when walking her, she heels pretty well. Now, she is not always consistent with all of these, especially when distracted by another dog. But overall she behaves much better than before and than I would have expected so soon. The obedience training has helped enormously here. Consistency has been key. She has not tried to run off. In fact the few times she has gotten out of the house she either ran and jumped in the car, not wanting to be left behind, or ran right up to me or my wife, just wanting to be with us. She loves to go to the cottage anmd play soccor with the kids or long walks in the grape fields or dash up and down the beach. She eats well, she is not packing on weight despite all that we feed her. She is very active. Our biggest issue is we need to get her to socialize with another dog. We have yet been able to find her a playmate. She is very physical when she plays, and it has only intimidated the dogs we have exposed to her. She is not viscious when she see's other dogs, but you can tell she is going to show them first who the Alpha is. We found she likes to help unload the groceries, recently, when my wife came home from the store, Ruca helped herself to a bag of hotdog buns. pulled it out of the grocery bag , ripped it open and took one bun out and started to eat it. My wife quickly saw what she had done and had to save the rest. Ruca complained that there was not a hot dog inside of it. She is a lovely dog and she is adjusting well to us and we have readily taken her into our hearts and home. 4/23/09 - Ruca went home with her new family today! 4/20/09 - Ruca has made the big time! Check her out on Youtube!!! Ruca Playing Soccer Ruca and her ball Ruca and her Squeaky Ruca’s crate training continues and she is now very comfortable going in and out of her “house”. When we have to leave she goes right in and waits for her treat. Sometimes we give her frozen stuffed bones. We only give them to her while she is in her crate so she associates the special treats with the crate. In turn, her crate becomes “special”. Sometimes we will put the goodies in her crate and lock her out of it. That way she is begging to get in. She is a fast learner and really wants to please us. Ruca really enjoys playing in the yard. We have a soccer ball and she will nudge it along with her snout then kick it with her paws. She is quite the soccer player. Sometimes she just takes the ball and wants to play “chase”. She has one stuffed toy that she plays with indoors. She will walk around the house with it in her mouth just squeaking, squeaking, squeaking. It’s funny because she truly entertains herself. She gets a little rhythm going too. She is learning that she does not have to play alone and we will throw it for her. She tries to wait for us to throw “bear” but her wiggle gets in the way sometimes. She tries to sit but sometimes she “hovers” ready to spring into retrieval mode. Back it comes….squeak, squeak, squeak. 4/13/09 - Ruca has come around and is a wonderful quirky little girl. Her personality is really showing now that she is feeling safer and trusts us more. She fits in and plays well-although she still plays rough. She still likes to jump but we are working on that. We have her sit before we pet her…. but she is so wiggly and excited it’s very hard for her to control herself. We sometimes we even call her “Wiggles” We've made a video of Ruca and her favorite toy. If the other dogs are tired, she will insist they play with her. She will walk around “squeaking” until someone gives in and plays! She is a very funny girl. Ruca loves to be outside. She and her canine sister play tag and have a blast running their path thru the bushes and along the fence. Her crate training is coming along nicely, too. Ruca goes in and settles down very quickly. Before, we had to toss the cookie into the crate and she would follow it in. Now, she will go in and we give her the cookie after she goes in her crate. She's getting the hang of it. Ruca loves to cuddle and is always available for a face wash! Ruca is not around children very much. We get an occasional visit from a 3 year old and sometimes older kids. Ruca uses her paws when she jumps up so she would be best with older children. 4/9/09 - Ruca’sdoing very well. She has gradually opened up to everyone and is friendly. We even feed everyone in the same room, and, at the same time. No more baby gates needed! Ruca’s favorite canine companion, Rocky, was adopted on Friday and we thought it would be a very difficult weekend for Ruca. On Saturday she paced a little and tried to sniff him out. Once she realized he was no longer here, she changed. She became submissive to our other dogs and fit right in. No more squabbles, no unstable behaviors. It was weird-like a light switch. She has made a remarkable turnaround. Ruca is learning the routine. She plays well in the yard (still a little “ruff”) with our other two dogs. She races in and around the bushes, dodging back and forth playing “tag”. We bought her a soccer ball and she kicks it, chases it, nudges it and has a lot of fun with her friends. She really likes to try to chase the birds-the ones flying of course! It’s really funny to watch her play. She loves to be outside. Ruca is learning her manners and loves her training sessions. Probably because she gets cookies! She know how to sit, lay down and is working on stay. She walks well on a leash but will still gets excited when she sees anything move. She would be best with older children that can control her if she decides to “chase”. She is now a more natural weight and is eating regularly. 3/21/09 - When Ruca arrived here, she seemed overwhelmed at the time and was a bit nervous. She looked so small compared to our dogs-but she is also a bit on the skinny side. I'd say she is about 40-45 lbs. All leg muscle! We thought it best to keep her separate from the pack until she "adjusted". Ruca was accident free and does fine in her crate. Ruca will let us know when she has to go outside-even if she is in her crate. Sometimes she needs a little coaxing to go inti it, but usually a cookie does the trick. She will let out a few protest barks but will settle down if she is not given any attention for barking. Ruca is still nervous so we are rotating her crate time to keep her separate from the pack. She is spending some time in the finished basement, helping me do laundry and watching a little TV. The pack is staying upstairs. Me and Ruca with some one-on one time. She can hear the other dogs upstairs and has a hard time calming down. Once she laid down (yes, on the couch…it's the basement furniture), she cuddled up and fell asleep with her head on my lap. :) The laundry can wait. She needs some rest. She is still not sure she wants to play and does not trust yet. We put the pack inside and play with Ruca. She plays a little rough and gets easily excited. She likes to play "come get me", and will chase a ball, frisbee, stick, or even a bird. She thinks she can jump up and get them! She does the "Pepe' Le Pew" pounce. She can jump high but has not even attempted to jump the fence-she not interested in leaving. She ate a little today but still not much of an appetite. We have fed her by hand and she does not appear to have food aggression with people. She will stiffen up if another dog comes near her food so we do not leave the food down and let them graze all day-not yet. She was more interested in sniffing and checking things out when she is out of her crate. I took her for a short walk and she did very well on a leash. She has very good eyes and focused on squirls, birds, and leafs. Each time she wanted to go after those things, we would stop and have her sit until she was not interested. The walk was short in distance but timely. Ruca caught on and each "sit" got shorter. Ruca loves to play with a big "kong" ball that we have. We throw it and she fetches it. When she picks it up it will sometimes get stuck on her bottom teeth. She is so funny! She walks around pretending it's not there. She shakes her head and gets it off most of the time. Ruca and Rocky played very well together. Barry avoids Ruca and she will sometimes just follw him. We correct her if she starts getting excited. I don't think they will be best of friends. Ruca was out with Abby today too. Sometimes they are friends, sometimes not......but then again they are females! |
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