First week of school and Baxter updates

The first week of school went really well I think. The girls seem to like both of their teachers, and both of them is eager to head off in the morning for the day.I'm hoping Sydney's teacher will help her get out of the habit of not actually talking with words, but using facial expressions and paws, or her sister to do the work for her.

And all the family is in love with our newest addition, well, let me qualify that. The humans are in love. The cats, not so much! The few days spent with the Jack Russel Terrorist puppy seems to have made a huge impression. The first 2 days Abby and Carrie refused to come inside. Now they are willing to enter the building, but Abby was not willing to stick around. I moved their food back to the garage, so Abby sits by the cat door meowing when she wants breakfast. I miss them. Carrie came in yesterday and Baxter tried to approach. She shot him down with one look. Talk about calm assertive energy and claiming your space! She had a clear message. He turned right around and went away. Abby, maybe we did the wrong thing. We scooped her up and held her near Baxter. She hissed and threatened him with her paws, he did absolutely nothing but sniff a little.

So I started this post yesterday, and today I am happy to report that not only are the cats back in the house, they even were in the same room with Baxter.  He has been quite quiet and respectful up until this point, although just a few minutes ago, he tried to invite Carrie to play with him.  She looked at him as if he was crazy and very slowly crept away from him.  He followed until I lured him away from her with a fun toy.  We played for a few minutes, and now he is happily snoozing in the crate.

Today the potty score was Baxter 6 - Heather 8.  My scores were successful potty breaks outside, His scores are the number of accidents.  Sigh.  I am thinking of training him to ring a bell.  One good thing, he is a puppy so they are small accident spots not big lakes!  But since Karl found them with his foot twice, I don't see that info really helping me right now.  Must monitor his movements more often!  Anyway, I'm off to bed.