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We will continue to add updates and pictures on a regular basis. She is a wonderful addition to our family and we feel very blessed.

Hi. things are continuing to improve.. Joey is a sweety and very smart. i am very glad we did a kennel and a fence cause she is a little escape artist. I will not be suprised the day she learns to climb th cyclone fence!! Anyways. we have her safely contained and will be getting her microchipped next week. I do have a big question.. Are you sure she is a rottweiller and not a black and tan coon hound? The mix may be with a hound, but I have more and more comments about the "hound" and she acts and sounds like one. I know the brother looked more Rottweiller in the photo's but in the end, i think they have some coonhound in them if not more coonnie than rottie. We love her anyways, but just wanted to share that with you. Is that okay that we were sort of identiied as a Rottie handling family. We are learning the coonhound and the technics are basically the same since they are both working dogs and just adore her. I had no idea how similar the marking for the black and tan and the rottie were.

Things are going very well so far. Joey is beginning to adjust more and more each day to having a stable family. I do have a question.. She interacts with my 14 yr old son in a much different way than the rest of us. She is very fearful of him when he walks near her and runs circles frantically around him and barks in a manner that we don't know if she is egging him on to play with her or it is a warning bark. She runs when he tries to walk up to her. She does rest with him and did come to his aid when he was laughing as though she was protecting him. We did a sort of dog pack gathering around my son when she treated him that way and she seemed to stop, but there is defintely something there. Do you know of any boys that either played with her gleefully and she is just tying to get Andree to do the same with her or is there a history we need to be aware of to end this behavior?

Shelter response: It sounds like Joey may be confused about Andree's place in the pack, so I'd recommend having him do lots of calm, authoritative things with her to show he is above her in the pack hierarchy - have him put down her food bowl for her, have him give her treats for good behavior, lots of positive interactions. It's good to let her come to him on her own terms, and for her to have a positive result every time (a liver treat or a toy or some other great outcome for every approach). So, instead of having him walk up to her (resulting in her running), go ahead and let her walk up to him when he is sitting (without him even looking at her or calling her - he should casually ignore her). Then, when she approaches, he can reward her right away, by calmly giving her a treat or a toy.

Tweens and teens can be a bit louder, "clompier", and more intense and enthusiastic than calmer adults - this can be confusing energy for a pet that is not used to it, but I'm confident Joey will adjust quickly if allowed the time to do so at her own pace. If she's never seen a teenage boy, she may not understand "what" he is, LOL... or if she lived with a teenager before being abandoned, she may be carrying some baggage (either positive or negative) from that experience. Either way, time and positive interactions will help to create her relationship with Andree, as a new and separate thing from whatever she knew before.

The key is to making all their interactions casual and calm (never a "big deal") and positive (if you've ever seen It's Me or the Dog, she has a "chucking chicken chunks" method where a person will just casually toss the dog a piece of chicken from time to time whenever behavior is positive, thus reinforcing positive behavior AND rewarding the relationship in the dog's mind).