Tommy

Introducing our little man Tommy. Tommy is a Mini Foxie x, maybe with a Chihuahua or Jack Russell, and he is two years old. Tommy is healthy and fully vet worked.

Tommy is dog friendly and would benefit from a calm, mature and confident dog to hang out with in his forever home. He doesn’t usually play with the other dogs but loves toys and makes his own games or wants to play with his people. He would be ok in a home with a confident cat, but not with a scaredy cat as he might chase.

Tommy loves people, but isn’t always trusting of what people might be going to do, so he’ll take a while to warm up to you, but once you have a relationship with him he’ll give you his heart. In spite of his mistrust he is so keen to be with his people that he has some separation anxiety. He is super keen to spend all his time with people, sit on your lap, follow you wherever you go, but this isn’t healthy and will promote the issue to be point that he may eventually be unable to cope with normal life if allowed to do so at this stage, so we have been working on separation confidence whilst in foster care. If you’re looking for a little lap dog to hang with you 24/7 Tommy may sound ideal but we do not feel this would be healthy for him, so he must have a home with a yard and some outside time. He may bark at visitors but if they ignore him he’ll be curious and happy to have them present, but if they try to force friendship he’ll be quite unhappy. He’ll be best in a home without children.

Tommy appears to have had no toilet training at all prior to coming into our care and would casually toilet any place including inside on the carpet. If placed outside to toilet he would sit and cry not knowing why he was outside all alone. We have reverted to puppy toilet training and this is going amazingly well and will need to be continued initially in a new home, especially with the upset of a new house and new people for him to deal with. If you’re likely to be upset by accidents this may not be the boy for you. However you’ll also need to be prepared to take him out (and go with him) rain, hail or shine whilst he learns.

Tommy is currently taking an anti anxiety medication that we are hoping will help him transition to a new forever home and family, and the hope is that once he is firmly established in his new environment and happy that he’ll be able to wean off the medication. He takes no other medication, loves all food and eats well, but no aggression around the food. He is crate trained for nights and loves his crate, and crated for car travel - we would highly recommend continuing this, as he is very stressed in the car and may toilet there when stressed but is happy in the crate.

If you feel you might be the one for Tommy please email us at caninelifeline@hotmail.com and we’ll forward and application form.