laurenandkimi

That's so true - I need to stop thinking about all the things that he could be thinking/feeling and pay attention to what he's trying to communicate to me! I moved from the spare room back to my bedroom as a test last night and he slept all the way through from 10:30 to 5am, barked once and settled straight back down when I called down for him to go back to bed, and then up at 7am - so already great progress! I really think he just didn't like being moved to the kitchen and the door being shut on him, it probably felt much more like we were 'leaving' him, whereas now he can just keep ch

Thanks so much D'Elle - really appreciate your advice! I slept in the spare room yesterday night with the doors open (but gate shut) and a dim light and very low classical music on, and he was settled through the night until 6:30am, so I definitely think the dark and having the door shut might have been particularly distressing him. We're going to keep the door open at night I think, so we'll keep the cat shut upstairs with us at bedtime until we're certain they won't confront each other through the gate. I think I have been massively overthinking everything and not acknowledging that he'

Thanks all - really appreciate your advice! Had a chat through it all with my husband - he's really not keen at all on having the dog in the bedroom, so while I definitely think that's probably the easiest option we're going to try to work through it without doing that. Last night I slept down in the living room but didn't interact with Kimi and he settled down v quickly beyond a quick sniff of my head on the pillow, which makes me inclined to agree with the idea that he is genuinely worried about where we are/being left alone and not just attention seeking. We have a gate ac

This last Saturday we rescued our new Border Collie, Kimi. Kimi's 3 and has come from a previous family home with another, older, collie and three kids. Our house on the other hand, is just me and my husband, and our cat Sam (also a rescue, also 3, but we got him 2 years ago and he was a stray before that). Kimi was good as gold the first couple of days and actually seemed to completely contradict a lot of the advice that I'd found doing research beforehand on rescue dogs - he's very friendly and has already started claiming our laps whenever we sit down on the sofa, and he seems complete