Showing his true character...

Wilson sleeping on his back. He does this a lot. It's quite funny.

Wilson has been doing great lately. He seems to have fully adjusted to his (temporary) life here. Only some minor tweaking here and there and he should be good to go.

For example, when we first brought him into our home, we had to literally push him into his crate. Heck, Lynn even crawled in the crate with him to show that it was safe. Now, however, you say "crate!" (and if you have a treat in your hand), he literally runs upstairs and gets in. Such a great change.

Also, as you can see from the photo above, he loves to sleep on his back. When he does this, he has this growl on his face. He's not angry or dreaming or anything. His top lip just falls open and he makes classic faces. The photo above was from the first time we saw him sleep like that. Since then, we've probably caught him making that face three or four times. So, apparently, it's an everyday thing for him.

He's also a lot more active than four-year old basset hounds are supposed to be. He can sleep through the day while we're at work, no problem. But when we're at home, it's go! go! go! go! all.... the.... time. We're not really used to that since Jolene has discovered the one thing that most adult basset hounds enjoy: sleep. Typically, she has about an hour of play time in the evening and then, after a nice long power nap, another half hour of chewing at night. That's about it. So this whole up-and-down-the-stairs stuff isn't what we were expecting. Makes us think he's younger than four. It doesn't make him any less of a great dog. It's just that we were expecting a basset hound. You know? Lazy.

All that being said, we do have some observations that we may or may not have mentioned before. He likes to be dominant. But not an aggressive "I will KILL you!" dominant. More of a "I want to go through the door first" dominant. And a "I will pee over where you just peed to proclaim this spot mine" dominant. Which, when you have a dog as submissive as Jolene, who cares?

The only time things get bad is when Jolene is chewing on a bone he wants. And, as it turns out, he wants any bone that she may have at any time. He's growled at her when she's gotten too close to him a couple times which we, of course, quickly corrected. He's even gone and taken a bone from her while he was chewing a completely different one. We obviously corrected that too. But that doesn't seem to change things. We've probably watched him do that three times a week for the last couple weeks and the only "progression" we've seen is, when we stand up, he gives us a look like "I'm sorry but I have to take this from her." He used to just go for it. Now he at least pauses first. So we're working with him on that. He needs to understand that, when he has a bone he is content with, and Jolene wants a different bone -- completely unrelated to the one he has -- that it's okay. This mentality may take a while to fix.

What's weird is, when they're outside they act like the best of friends. They're outside running around, chasing each other and wrestling right now as a matter of fact. But when they're in the house, Wilson is alpha and that's just how it goes. It's a strange relationship.

When Wilson (L) and Jolene combine forces to get food, a dream team is born.