I hesitate to say this because I don’t want to jinx anything, but Jonah has become fully integrated in our house. We no longer worry about him interacting with Frankie—it seems like they have built up a nice level of trust and he has stopped guarding the couch (we still avoid interactions near the water bowl).

Jonah has been sleeping in our room (in bed with Frankie). To go from being worried about space guarding to sleeping and not concerned is a huge jump, but it happened slowly. Honestly, sometimes you have a feeling that things will be okay and you have to go out on a limb and trust your gut. We decided to try out having him upstairs with us after a couple of weeks of him being excellent with Frankie (no matter the situation) and because we felt sad when leaving him downstairs all alone to sleep in his kennel.

He LOVES it. Once he’s tucked in he doesn’t really move for 8-9 hours. We try to have them sleep on opposite sides of the bed and stop him from stepping all over her in the morning. The dogs seem completely fine and unworried about being on the bed together. Overall, Jonah has made amazing amounts of progress. He is already like a completely different dog.

Jonah is also working on being brave in public. We took him into a pet store this weekend and he did really well—provided I was holding him. While in my arms, he was able to be curious and look around (and be somewhat isolated from commotion and barking dogs). We did put him down on the floor for a few minutes and he did okay. He was obviously scared (hypervigilant, scrabbling on the smooth floors for purchase, etc.) but wasn’t terrified (he didn’t even tuck his tail). We will continue to bring him into pet stores to try and acclimate him to them. Once he feels more comfortable, we will try bringing him to an adoption event for a few minutes (even if we have to hold him the whole time).