 Hi, Fuffa Ray. Hi. Finally made it. I think it's been just over a year since we adopted Bunny, our rescue greyhound. And I wanted to give you guys a one-year update because a year ago I promised you that I would do this. And it's been an amazing process and time. As you can see, she's a much different dog now. She's very happy. We're so happy and so lucky to have her. But for those of you watching these videos, like in a row when we got her to the next week of having her to fast forward a year later, I did want to, you know, give you a summary, I guess, of our experience and Bunny's progress. So yeah, it might be a little long-winded. It might be, you know, not what some of you guys are interested in. But I did just want to make this. So here we go. Here's Bunny's one-year update. I think she's just gonna sleep here. She's not gonna look at you. So first and foremost, the biggest change for Bunny over the course of a year has been her general decrease in anxiety. She used to be afraid of everything, the kitchen, the TV, overhead lights, her water dish, everything outside. And now she will gladly almost come all the way into the kitchen if we're in there cooking. And she will always be in the kitchen if there are treats. So she has greatly decreased her fear of the kitchen and kitchen noises, as well as overhead lights in general. A year ago, she did not want to be around the TV at all. She didn't like the sound of it. She wasn't a super fan of there were like crazy visuals. We did try to train her with rewards and bring her in there and try and decrease her anxiety, even just to be anywhere in the same room. And we would try it with the sound off. We would try it with the sound on, but the visuals off. She didn't really respond to the training at all. Then one time we took her to Big Bear and the TVs there were much smaller and much older and she was in a new environment and decided that suddenly TVs were kind of okay. Then by the time we came home, she sort of decided that the TVs were not that bad. And she started coming in there on her own terms, little by little and spending more and more time in the living room. Now she's in love with Seinfeld. She will sit on the couch or the little beanbag chair in there and watch Seinfeld for hours. She is allowed on the couch. A year ago, we were not sure if we're going to let her on the couch. We didn't know how she would do with the other dogs on the couch altogether. She is allowed on the couch with Julian and I and the other dogs and still under some supervision. She's not allowed on the couch when we have guests over, even though sometimes she thinks she is and she'll jump up there and try to claim dibs. But she's very respectful when we ask her to get off Julian, started doing it, slap his leg and say bunny come. And she's very respectful of the rules of the couch, which I know to her might be a little gray. Like what do you mean sometimes I'm allowed on the couch and other times I'm not. But she's a very good girl about it and will always go lay in her bed or on the beanbag chair in there when we ask her to. One of my favorite times of the entire day is breakfast and dinner because sometimes she used to get scared to eat. At first she might pick at her food if she was feeling stressed. But now she gets so, so excited to eat. I know eventually we should probably calm this down a little bit. But when you have a really shy dog that you're trying to get come out of their shell, it's just the absolute best thing to see. So we definitely encouraged her getting excited at feeding time. Now it's probably a little overkill but it is just it's really cute. She is incredibly respectful of our rules that we have set for her which is a nice change from the Italian Greyhounds which for some reason are just made of pure mischief. But he doesn't have that like streak of mischief in her. We have a baby gate for example when we're in the game room and we're working and it's a short gate. Like she could easily step over it or knock it over. But because it's there she's incredibly respectful that it's time to stay in this room. And the reason that we have that there is that because although Bunny is really good about going potty outside she doesn't still at this point always know if she's in a different part of the house that she should come tell us that she has to go outside you know. So we do let all of them out like on a regular schedule but on times when we would just let her sit in the living room while we were in here sometimes she would just be like I gotta pee and she would get up and pee on the floor and it would be like Bunny. She's a very big girl it's a lot of pee. But I would say she's like what 95% good about going to the bathroom outside. A year ago when we got her uh if you watch any of our Twitch streams we had to make like a whole thing that says it's flashing and Julian would have to mute his mic and it says Bunny is barking. We would get her so exhausted like multiple walks a day tons of play time tons of just getting her as tired as we could and then right every night at like 10 30 or 11 it was like Bunny party time she would get up she would get rowdy she would bark she would insist that it's like Bunny time and we just did not know what to do but that slowly stopped as she started getting more and more accustomed to our schedule so now when we're in here at night streaming or gaming she just chills and that is so much better than 10 p.m. Bunny barking time. Also the same thing with the podcast though she's always been really good with the podcast she likes to just run right up there it's a room that she goes in once a week when we're filming that and she gets really excited that the door is open and we bring her bed in there and she just sits there and chills the entire time. She's a very compatible dog for us and that she likes you know walks and energy out and playing a little bit but for the most part she's a couch potato and we work from home and we just we're always chilling so it's nice to have a dog that likes to chill. Also in our bedroom at night she used to sleep in a crate really happily she liked it it was her safe place she really enjoyed that then slowly after a few months out of nowhere she would just start barking at night at like 11, 12, one in the morning like she would get up she would get unsettled and she would just bark really loudly like a let me out kind of bark we had the idea you know let's just open the door and see what happens and she would walk out of her crate walk around like look at the tv go in her crate get kind of scared and then settle so we started sleeping with the crate door open at night and every night she would sort of like get up and walk around for a minute and then go back in but it seemed like to me she was sort of showing interest that she wanted to sleep outside of a crate at night that's just what felt safe to her but that she was like building up her bravery to you know maybe sleep somewhere else and then eventually I started putting beds and blankets around the bedroom to see if she would ever choose a different place to sleep and sure enough you know she might spend like 30 minutes in her bed and then back to the crate and then over time she just decided that she didn't want to sleep in her crate anymore and it was really cute because you know when she's downstairs she's not in the crate she's sleeping on couches and beds and blankets although she will almost always choose a blanket sprawled out on the ground over a dog bed or even the little couch we have upstairs or this couch I don't know if she gets hot or uncomfortable but if I had known in the beginning that she wanted to sit on blankets as much as she does I would have saved a lot of money on dog beds like she just prefers them she also figured out all on her own when she started sleeping outside of her crate that if everyone else is on the bed I wouldn't be on the bed so one time we did invite her into the bed not to sleep but to sit and have some cuddles see how the other dogs did much to marble's horror at first he was like what are you doing up here you're too big the rule is for her which she's again incredibly respectful of no going on the bed at night no going on the bed if you're not invited and it's only in the morning pretty much so right when she wakes up she's really cute depending what time we wake up she might bark at us she wants us to get up or she'll walk over the side of your bed and sniff you and then she wants to get invited into the bed so we ask her nicely because she'd like to come up in the bed she usually jumps up there and she just has like I don't know 10 15 minutes of just really sweet morning cuddles and she just wants her belly pet and just to spend some quality time and she really enjoys that I think it really makes her feel like one of the other dogs like she's part of the pack I don't really care what anyone thinks it's just so sweet and I wouldn't trade that time for anything in the world I just think it's so nice I know there's a lot of people out there that sleep with their big dogs I mean there's already three small dogs in our bed I don't think that we will ever allow her to sleep with us in our bed A because she doesn't really like being touched while she's sleeping and bothered completely understandable but especially by the other dogs when she's sleeping she doesn't want to get stepped on and walked on and they walk around the bed and walk over each other constantly also a year ago you might remember how we had to teach her how to walk up and down the stairs that's not a problem anymore she's really good at it and sometimes she likes to be first up the stairs and first down the stairs first out the door gate means go if you're a greyhound so anytime there's like a possibility of a door opening her face is like smushed up against it she's ready to go you might also remember we had a hard time with her resource guarding toys and reminder with that is that's a dog's resources so if a dog is really attached to their food or their bed or a toy they could you know show signs of aggression or growl at you snappy you bite at you depending what you were trying to do I don't know she would growl at us like really nasty open mouth growl at us like this is my toy and you're not going to take that from me and we did work a lot with her on drop it or leave it teaching her that if I take the toy first of all I'm giving you the toy but second of all if I take the toy it's not gonna disappear I'm gonna play with you at first that was really hard and it was a difficult thing to work on but I think that the biggest change actually came from building a relationship with her and building trust with her more so than the actual training of drop it or leave it and that she knows now that she can trust us I'm not gonna take your toy and make it go somewhere that you don't want it to go the worst thing that's gonna happen to it is it's gonna get thrown across the room so you can chase it and it's even more fun now or especially if she takes something that is not hers she no longer resource guards that she listens well we do like a leg slap or bunny drop it whereas some of you guys might remember the very first command that we had to teach her was watch me because she didn't understand that I was trying to communicate with her Gray save the adoption agency that we got her from did warn us that they get really attached to their people and anything that smells like you they might be interested in taking and we've heard that you know remote controls or even cell phones is something that if your dog smells it and it smells like you they might take that and destroy it she's not really a destructive dog she doesn't really want to destroy stuff but she will steal your things and horn them so for her she will take any shirt or socks or hat or anything that you've left somewhere in the house and hoard it usually either in her bed or in the living room on the floor where she likes to play with it and toss it to herself and I know that we can stop this by stop leaving our clothes places but I mean if that's really the worst she's gonna do and she's not gonna eat it or destroy it it's very cute and she does respond to drop it and leave it but you know every once in a while you'll find like a whole sweatshirt in her bed and you're like where did you get this you might also remember us not being able to leave the house for more than 20 minutes at a time and she would go in her crate we do crate her when we leave the house the very first time that we left the house with her in her crate she barked so loudly that she set off the alarm in our house and it was really difficult for a while for us to be able to crate her and leave her I did watch a bunch of youtube videos on how to you know ease some of the separation anxiety you know because we're home all the time even an hour a day you know to go to the gym or to go to the grocery store was a long time for her and we had to work up to that so it was like 15 minutes and 20 minutes then 30 minutes then 40 you know we really worked low and slow and long on building up that time with us leaving the house right now we haven't really crated her in a while which I'm sure she's not upset about at all we would put a Kong toy with some of her kibble you know subtracted from her meals with some peanut butter on it and leave her in there with that and at first she was not interested she was upset and over time that sort of became her routine and she was excited to have some peanut butter and would happily sit there for you know an hour and a half two hours while we went to the gym grocery store that kind of stuff since then we've built up that time so much longer and we feel much better and she feels much better about being her crate if we're not here which I'm proud of that's a hard work in terms of her relationships with the other dogs I would definitely say that she's interested in Peach the most they're both girls they're both very similar in age and Peach is really sweet so anytime Peach is in one of our laps and Bunny brings her head up to us Peach will give her kisses and she I think she's still a little afraid of Bunny's size when they're like running and playing she will chase Peach and Peach will chase her back a little bit I think that they're still working on their relationship but that's the one that will probably happen the first and the fastest she's not interested in the boys and the boys aren't interested in her the boys are only interested in me and sitting in my lap and getting the most attention from me she's just not interested in them and I doubt that they will ever like be buddies but I do think that Peach and Bunny have the potential to be buddy someday in terms of her relationship with us Bunny loves me plenty like she's very affectionate very sweet she loves me I'm her mommy but she thinks Julian is just the best person in the whole world they have probably the cutest relationship she always wants to play with Julian like Julian is her play buddy if she could pick someone in this house to play with it's not Peach it's Julian it's not a toy it's Julian she will let him do just about anything like when he picks her up I don't know why she lets him do this or or any of the things that she lets him do to her but she just thinks he is the best she wasn't super interested in affection when we got her she just didn't really respond to it she didn't really make eye contact with you or give you any indication that she was enjoying it if she wasn't she wouldn't really give you any indication that she would like you to stop either so we taught her a thing that I called more which was I would pet her and then take my hand away and then shake her hand and then pet her somewhere they knew she really liked and then take my hand away shake her hand and then pet her somewhere I knew she really liked again and over time that turned into more and I would say you want more and if she wanted more pets she would reach out her hand and ask for more and then that way I could know when she was done getting attention you know she could just lay her head down or stop pawing and then I could leave her alone and if she wanted more I'm happy to give her more I mean most of the time when you're petting her now the answer is more but you know it's a good thing for me to know and for other people to know if she would like to be done with the attention I'm just I'm gonna let you know I'm done overall though I would say that adopting bunny was one of the best decisions we've ever made the first few months were really hard they were a lot of work it's not a lot of the fun dog time that you're hoping to get eventually now all of our days really feel like those days that we were hoping would exist someday now we get them every day you know we're not people that have had big dogs in the past and I've certainly never had a greyhound I've certainly never worked with a dog that didn't have like a previous experience you know just being a dog it was a lot of work desensitizing her to everything and you know we still have a lot of work to do like she's good with people she's good with dogs she always has been since day one even with strangers people coming in the house we haven't had to worry about that and it's been so wonderful but she does need some desensitizing to you know the rest of the world she's great on walks she still doesn't like trucks you know something she hasn't seen yet so we just need some more time with her unfortunately we're quarantined right now so we're not currently working on that but I don't think she cares right now I think she's having a great time if you just adopted a greyhound like I said even that that first week that we got her you know if it was just her it's really not too bad but because half of the work comes from retraining your other dogs how to coexist with a new dog a big dog and a dog that has uneven energy sometimes was very difficult but this has been I would say one of my proudest accomplishments and I know Julianne you agree with me at this point we we couldn't imagine our life without her like she's become so much joy and so much fun and I know I'm biased because she's my dog but I just think that she is one of the funniest dogs she looks funny sometimes and I just think that greyhounds in general have just the sweetest most delightful personalities once they get a chance to really let that shine and come out when they feel safe and they're very sweet they're very sensitive I just I couldn't make sure my life without her since we've done this and you know there were so many days a year ago when Julianne and I would look at each other and just really celebrate our small victories and be like I can't believe that she did that I can't believe that it's getting better you know and now looking back on it it's hard to remember how difficult it was because she's so much better and all she really needed was just some love and patience and she did the rest you know because I don't think it was all of our training I think that helps but it's just a testament to how incredible dogs are and greyhounds are and all of the change that happened really came because she wanted to and she felt safe enough to and she did the work you know we worked hard taking care of her and trying to give her a safe home but you know she really came all this way I guess if you guys have any other questions or anything I can answer I'm gonna try my best to get back to some comments or stuff or tweet me and I'm always happy to give any advice that I could although this was just my experience and I'm not a dog trainer nor am I a dog professional but this has been one of the most positive experiences for us and I'm just overwhelmed with happiness like we have so much love and joy that did not exist until we got her and now we have all of this like she's just great I can't imagine not having her and I think all of the organizations that adopt dogs like Bunny or really any dog I mean they did a great job helping us get a dog that was really good for us and we were good for her and we were a very good match I want to say thank you to GreySafe thank you guys for being patient well some of our content was a little different for a while and you know it's even different now but thank you for being supportive thank you for your advice when I was really struggling for the first couple months a lot of you guys gave me some really great advice we did it we wanted to adopt a greyhound and she is just the most wonderful dog we could have ever asked for and this definitely made us better people and better dog owners and I don't know it's just there's no process like this you can't really describe it it's just like it's incredible are you baby you're baby we love you Bunny we love you so much honey yeah we're so lucky to have you and thank you for being in our lives and thank you for being willing to learn how to just be a dog I couldn't be happier and proud of us because we really we really did that yeah you want to get in on this we did it yeah thank you guys for being patient and for coming on this journey with us and I know looking back a year ago it was hard to imagine and sometimes you know I cried a lot but it was hard to imagine sometimes if this was even possible that maybe she would just be a an afraid dog for a lot of her life and that that was okay but you know it's really hoping that she would come around and feel more comfortable than she did that's the one-year bunny update she's just a regular dog now almost regular still kind of funny looking yeah thanks for watching and I hope this gave you some closure from the year-long journey that we've been on yeah now she's just a regular dog whatever I'll see you guys next week bye bye