Hiram Flaversham progress report

Hiram's been busy at boarding school. He was extremely anxious and a bit depressed when he arrived, but he's brightened up quite a bit and had become the favorite of his instructor. Hiram is a relatively mellow fellow, but is very uncomfortable with other animals, particularly smaller ones, including little dogs, cats, birds, etc.

Hiram's been acing his homework and is coming along nicely in all his subjects, but it is very unlikely that he's going to change his mind about the other animal situation anytime soon. He does very well in school and enjoys it a great deal, so people who would want to continue his training would be his first choice. Once he's done with school, he'll be looking for an all-adult home where he'll be the only non-human in residence as other critters make him nervous.  He's learning to tolerate their presence in a social setting, but he would prefer they kept a respectful distance; his personal "bubble" is about 10 feet right now. With time and work that could be improved, but that's where we are right now.

Witch King progress report

Witch King, called "King", has been at boarding school almost a month now. Initially, it seemed that we had a dog whose impulse control issues were so acute that we were not going to be able to do much with him. His attention span was so poor, he couldn't focus for a moment, and his social skills were so bad that he literally posed a danger to any dog he may have come into contact with.

But after completing this first round of training, King shows a great deal of improvement. As you can see from the video, while he's working he has a reasonably decent attention span, can follow his trainer's cues and performs quite well, quite a bit better than we would have hoped for a month ago. He still is quite impulsive, and he gets frustrated easily; you can see him wiggling around in the video. But he does have the capacity to relax, and with continued work with his trainers, and we hope, his adopters, King has the capacity to improve even more.

King will be looking for an all-adult home, where someone is home a good deal of the time, and where the folks are exceptionally dog savvy. Of course, his new family will need to be committed to his on-going training; it's likely he'll need maintenance for life in this area. But he's really a sweet kid, and can be pretty charming, so he's bound to win the right family over soon.