Zim's Progress

Well, it's been a little while since I've updated on Zim's progress and a fair amount has happened.

Potty-training:
He was seeming pretty well potty-trained (he'd stopped having accidents but not long enough that I was ready to declare him officially potty-trained) but then we screwed him up. I was playing a card game and it was mine turn to take him out when he signalled. Stupidly, I took my turn before going to let him out and then got caught up and forgot to take him out. He held it for a while, but eventually the inevitable happened and after that he started having a number of accidents---he wouldn't signal but would just go and we'd have to rush him outside. Obviously, this was all my fault and I feel really bad that I caused him to do that. We have gotten him back on track now (he hasn't had an accident in over a week) and I've vowed to just take him out right away whenever he signals like I should have then.

Crate-training:
Well, we had been working on slowly getting Zim used to his crate and had been putting him in the bathroom while we were asleep or away. Well, yesterday he did his first destructive thing ever and he chewed on the wall. He really only took the wallpaper off but obviously we can't have him doing that; he could hurt himself that way. So now we've had to return to the crate and he hates it just as much as before. As soon as he realized we were putting him in there to sleep, he was crying and all that work to get him to like the thing by putting meals in that was destroyed. I really wish there were a better solution here but I can't have him hurting himself.

Resource Guarding:
Zim has stopped doing this through the power of trading. A while ago a friend took a tissue from him and he didn't growl or anything. He wasn't keen on giving it up but there was nothing bad. Definitely going to be keeping up with the trading so that he never starts that again and so that his "give" stays good enough that we can take things from him when we need to and are without treats for some reason.

Commands:
His sit has always been pretty good and he'll do that basically automatically and for any reward. He's also developed a good "leave it" and "give," which I'm really proud of.