FIRST REPORT FROM LEAH'S FOREVER HOME 

Karen says "Due to the current and forthcoming snow we'd made the decision that if all went well with today's visit, we'd bring Leah home today and I'm pleased to say the meeting went very well and Les and I fell in love with Leah straight away."
 
"She's adorable and very affectionate and is already settling in well.  She was confident entering the house; wanting to look everywhere, she polished her dinner off and then fell into a deep sleep.  We had a lovely walk earlier and I've just taken her out for a nightime toilet walk before bed.  We're yet to find out how she settles overnight."
 
"Many thanks to Lucy and Graeme for their hospitality today and we hope Grace wasn't too upset after Leah left."  

LEAH IN HER NEW HOME

 Karen says "Here are some pictures taken by a friend, of Leah and Becks their Guide Dog puppy (in training) having fun in their garden.

 
We still can't believe how wonderful Leah is, she's beautiful in every way and we're thoroughly enjoying having her as part of our family."

UPDATE FEB 2010

 Leah settled into the fabric crate Lucy and Graeme kindly loaned us for bedtime the first few nights but it soon became apparent she was getting stressed in it when we left her and one evening we had to go back to her as we could tell from the noise she was making that something wasn't right, she'd tipped herself over in it!  We bought her a fleece lined bed and she absolutely loves it, no issues at all at bedtime, sleeps through the night and she quickly taught herself that she goes to her bed when we're having our dinner!

Leah has settled in amazingly; she takes everything in her stride and is an absolute joy :-)  We had two accidents, both in her first week, other than that she tells us when she needs to go out.  She goes to work with Les most days; she loves all the fuss she gets from Les' colleagues and plays in the sports centre when no one else is around; if Les is on a late shift he's at home with her.  When she is left it's only for a few hours, we leave the radio on and she either plays with her toys or has a nap.  We can't remember a time when she wasn't here she's such a big part of our family now.
 
Everyone who meets Leah has fallen head over heels in love with her which is expected as she's a darling.

Leah loves being brushed which is therapeutic for both of us.

She's great around other dogs, she just wants to play, which of course not all dogs want to do.  She's slowly starting to understand that she can't jump on them all the time! She absolutely loves birds, she'll sit for ages watching them in the garden on our feeder, absolutely mesmerised which mesmerises me!!
 
She hasn't once attempted to go upstairs and we knew we didn't want to encourage her to do this, so this is great.  She'll just sit at the bottom of the stairs and patiently wait for us to come back down.
 

Though she walks nicely on the lead I was concerned that when she does pull she makes herself rasp, so we bought her a harness and it's made all the difference, a better walking experience for all of us.
 
We plan to take Leah to training classes but are just deciding which one at the moment; as Pauline suggested we will go along the first time without Leah to make our decision.
 
The only 'problem' we're encountering is Leah suffers with severe car sickness and now refuses to get into the car.  We don't know if this is car sickness plain and simple or psychological as we don't know her history.  We've pondered whether it may be because to her going in the car means moving home again, we just don't know, however everyone has said to persevere which is what we intend to do.  Pauline has kindly given us suggestions and the names of some herbal essences that we will try.

 
The picture above is of our nephew Oscar (4 1/2yrs) meeting Leah for the first time; he's a bit nervous of dogs but he absolutely loved Leah.