Ryka

"I moved to KC this past week into a great building where all of my neighbors have dogs. Ryka loves that she has so much opportunity to socialize, but she gets anxious when she can hear that the other dogs are going out for walks, etc, and she's not! There's kind of a collective floor-wide barking chorus that goes on every morning around 7:30 a.m. Apparently, that's when the first dog gets to go on his walk and all the other dogs are jealous :)

She's also been spending a lot of time at Ryan's house in his nice yard. She loves it there because there's a huge shade tree, lots of random wildlife that comes through and an old schnauzer on the other side of the chain-link fence that she's made friends with. We were worried that she would jump over the fence, but it didn't happen until THIS MORNING!

Since she gets antsy around 8 a.m. every morning and we were sleeping in, Ryan put her in the yard and came back to bed. An hour later when we got up, there was Ryka on the other side of the gate, just waiting patiently to be let back in. Obviously, she had jumped the fence and gone around to meet all the other dogs in the neighborhood - they were all barking like crazy!

I can tell she's still a little unsure about her surroundings, but she's slowly getting used to it. I think the hardest thing for her to adjust to is all the city sounds. There's so much to listen to and she gets overwhelmed. I have huge windows in my loft that she loves to look out of and monitor everything going by. I'm going to have to get some drapes that I can close, though, because she also monitors at night and barks at every single creature that goes by. I'm glad she's being such a good guard dog, but I don't mind if there are squirrels at my door :)

She's getting better with voice commands - I'm able to let her off the leash for a little while at a time. She also knows that when we go on walks, she has to stop and look both ways before she crosses the street. She knows she has to stay on the sidewalk and not step into the road.

She's made friends with all the other dogs in the building, except for one collie named Blitzen. But, I think he's just a cranky old dog and doesn't make friends with anyone!

Ryka pretty much ignores all the toys I buy her and prefers instead to play tug-of-war with an old sock. It is seriously the most hilarious thing I've ever seen - I can only play with her for so long before I'm laughing too hard to hold on! Thankfully, Ryan has plenty of old gym socks that he doesn't mind if they get chewed to shreds. "

-Kristin Puls