I've spent loads of time over the last week reading through posts, so I figured it was time to say hello!

A little over a week ago, our family adopted a 9 year old GSP named Remy. I grew up with GSPs and have always loved the breed, and since we just bought a house, I had started thinking it would be really nice to have a dog. But then I realized that trying to raise a puppy with our hectic life would be crazy, so I put that idea on the back burner. I guess sometimes life has different plans for you, though, because a couple of weeks ago, I was scanning craigslist and happened to see an ad for a GSP. I look through CL on a regular basis to see if I can refer people to various rescues, so I wasn't actually looking for a dog! I couldn't resist contacting the person with this ad, though, and long story short, we visited Remy, she seemed wonderful so she came home with us.

We have 5 kids in the house a lot of the time (my 3 older ones go back and forth between us and their dad) and they range in age from 16 years to 4 months. Remy's fantastic with the kids. We're working on training our 3 year old because he can get obnoxious and Remy has the patience of a saint with him.

It's obvious that she was obedience trained because she knows a lot of commands. She is even excellent with "drop it" when she chooses to bring us a gift, like a dirty sock. She's also completely house trained and trustworthy when we leave her. We both work at home and we don't leave her alone much because she's a good car rider, so she's fun to take with us if we're going some place that's dog friendly.

Her two "issues" are that 1) she has poor leash manners, and 2) she has storm anxiety. I tried a Gentle Leader with her and she does well, but as soon as I switch back to her regular collar, she's right back to pulling, so now I'm trying a prong collar to see if she can learn to walk better. For the anxiety, I tried melatonin and it really seems to make a big difference for her. If a storm is right on top of us, she wants to be in a cave, so she goes to my daughters' closet, but if the storm isn't close by, she shakes, pants, paces and tries to dig at the carpet. The melatonin doesn't completely relieve the anxiety, but it seems to allow her to at least lie down in the living room where we are.

She is a bit underweight at 39 lbs. so we need to figure out how to put a few pounds on her. She was being fed Beneful with Old Roy wet food, but I've been switching her over to Pro Plan gradually. I have had to add some wet Pro Plan to entice her to eat, but I'm trying to phase that out. I haven't measured her so I don't know how tall she is, but she's fairly petite for a GSP. Her ribs show a bit too much, thus the goal to increase weight. She's not terribly food driven so this is hard.

Here's a pic of her in "her" bean bag, showing what she thinks of early mornings....

Great to hear that you adopted an older dog! The best dog I ever had was a Mastiff/Lab mix that we picked up at the pound. She was seven or eight years old, and weak and atrophied from sitting on the hard concrete floor of her cell for 6 months. She looked like she was well over 10 years old when we got her. We basically thought we were just getting her so she could come out to our property and die with some dignity and love. But she perked right up, put on some muscle and gave us great joy for almost five more years. Everyone wants a puppy, so I admire you for taking in an older dog.

I think the leash manners can probably be corrected with a lot of patience and repetition, but I'm not so sure about the thunder storms at this point; pretty late in her life to begin reconditioning her. Lots of love and treats when those events occur would be my prescription. I desensitised my pup to loud noises by slamming cabinet doors when he was eating, just to associate loud noises with a pleasurable time. Maybe you could use that approach, starting small, like clapping your hands when she gets her favorite food/treat, and very gradually progressing to louder noises.

I've also had great luck with my hard pulling GSP using the Gentle Leader. With it he went from being extremely difficult to walk to behaving pretty well off leash, and getting better every day. I went over basic healing instruction with the gentle leader until I felt like he had it down pretty well, then strapped on the e collar for the off-leash correction. For me it was just a good tool to get him to settle down and focus on the task at hand.

Good luck and keep us informed.

I am new to the forum ...today.. seems to not be many brits on here? i haven't really lookes properly yet. Anyway... i have a rescue gsp, i will always have at least one rescue while i can, i am looking at him as i type,, what a gem he is. well done to every one that opens their homes to rescues know mater what breed they are.