The people who are responsible for Beau's adoption called last night. They want to come for a home visit this weekend and bring Beau with them. We're going to see how we all get along.
I had sent an email explaining how I felt about adopting Beau, what my thoughts were about dog training and having AmStaffs with children and what I planned to do if we were given the opportunity to have Beau come live with us.
They were pretty impressed, they said.
I raised Henry using the 'Little Whip' method of dog training. No hitting...instead, when he's done something unacceptable, we use a stern voice to tell him 'NO' and then we separate him from his 'pack' - ie, us. Dogs are by nature pack animals, and within that pack there's a hierarchy. In our house, Dave is the alpha dog and I'm second in line. We utilize that mentality and that hierarchy to our advantage. We use our voices instead of our hands. We've never hit him, and we never will. He knows when he's messed up because we either ignore him or we crate him for short periods of time. He'll tuck his tail and drop his ears because he knows he's in the wrong, and he'll roll over and show his belly to both Dave and I when we come near him...he's asking for our approval and doesn't like it when we deny it.
(We had used much the same method with our last AmStaff, Chyna, with good results. I didn't have a mane for it back then.....then I saw LW describe the exact same thing that we had been doing so I dubbed it the 'Little Whip' method).
Apparently they're going to ask me some questions about the AmStaff breed, so I'm going to go do some reading. I know a fair bit about it anyway, but I'm sure I have lots left to learn. If we're going to adopt Beau, I want to do things properly. I refuse to have him come live with us and then have to give him up for adoption yet again because we weren't prepared.
Beau deserves a 'forever' home. I'd like it if we could provide that for him.