Takki meets my dogs

Takki met my dogs yesterday. I introduced him to Danny first. Danny's the 'alpha' of my pack, though he's not quite right mentally he does a fair job. Danny chested Takki a few times and Takki submitted appropriately. In fact, I think Takki's in love. When I introduced him to Missy (who is very confident and expects everyone to love and play with her) he bared his teeth and growled at her and Quinn was less than nothing to him. But he wants to be near Danny at all times. Danny was on his bed in the living room and Takki did everything he could to be on the left side of me and doing his down stay by Danny.

Since my goal is to encourage Takki to care more about people than dogs, he hasn't had an opportunity to worship Danny today.

Takki has to work for everything he gets. He has to sit before we go out for walks, etc. He's sleeping in the crate downstairs, and he is unhappy. I can hear him through the heating ducts yipping most of the night. Luckily, I have a white noise machine so once I turn that on it doesn't matter what Takki says.

He did go off his hunger strike--tonight he ate food out of the bowl I was holding. Common to most Siberians, food is not very important, so when I told him he had to work for his food (or let me control the bowl) he made the decision to walk away rather than eat. This morning I had to plot a track for a tracking test so I took Takki with me to the park. When I had some down time, I worked with him offering his food as rewards. He worked for me a little, but was very timid and had great difficulty focusing. When another volunteer came up to talk to us, he actually hid behind me. My goal on this front is to get him to as many new places as possible. I'm not overly concerned about him greeting people, but he needs to become more comfortable in new environments if competition is in his future. I'll be taking him back to the park tomorrow, we'll see how he does with more people and dogs.