I'm up early this morning to wait on the phone call from the avian vet. Sitting here waiting to hear whether or not our bird has lived through the night/will live through the day is certainly not my favorite way to spend a morning.

On a brighter note, I thought I'd post a little about Oscar. I have been asked how he is doing on several occasions now and figure I owe you an update post. All is good news as he's doing really well. We think he's finally figuring out this is his forever home and we're not going to hurt him like his last owners. Every day he learns to trust us more, which, in turn, means he learns to listen more. He still has a long way to go though. We'll probably have to work on his training every day for the remainder of his life, but he is learning lots of commands including: sit, stay, down, take, drop it, leave it and quiet. He's much calmer on his walks and barks at almost nothing aside from other anxious dogs. He's also learning that the kitty is totally off limits. I still don't trust him enough to leave him alone with her, but, for the most part, when he sees her, he walks away. Whimpering, mind you, but at least he's walking away.

This weekend, Oscar is going on his first sleepover away from home. Since my in-laws have graciously offered to let him stay at their house over Christmas break, he's heading over there for a 24 hour trial run tomorrow. He's still on a very strict schedule with a tight set of rules so we want to work out any kinks and make sure to answer any questions they might have before we head out of town.

On Sunday, after we pick him up from Grandma and Grandpa's house, we have our second appointment with the behaviorist. Since it was dark the last time she came over, we weren't able to go for a walk and only worked on inside the house issues. It's time now for us to resolve his outdoor issues. He's still occasionally a little pull-y on his walks. We need to work on walking by, ignoring and meeting other dogs, especially ones who are anxious themselves. We also need to find a better way to keep his attention while we're out because he gets distracted by everything when we're outdoors. Compared to how he was several weeks ago, he is a million times better. We just need to fine tune what we're doing in order to help him learn these last few things.