Bringing a second dog home. I have some questions.

Also, theres a book called "The Rescue Dog" by Gwen Bailey which is pretty good.  Might be helpful.

Wow, what a night. She is absolutely gorgeous but VERY small. We did not expect her to be so small. And dainty. Heidi loves her but I am still so worried. Heidi wants to play and romp, and so does Sally...but Sally looks so fragile. I think with one bite, Heidi could break a leg bone. Her legs are like tiny sticks. heidi is POWERFUL, a lot of people have mentioned she seems to have some bull terrier in her. She is strong and playful. I am worried about her sheer strength hurting the puppy.

They do seem to like each other though.

Whoever said to question how well she was trained- was right. She has no leash manners and her neck is so fragile that I had to search for a way to walk her that didn't practically choke her. I got her a gentle leader that I read about somewhere else on the forum and we will try that today.

She was definately a family pet. She knows what a house is, she understands family dynamics. And I found out this morning the likely cause of her being a stray. The leash malfunctioned and she took off like a rocket. We live one block from a highway and I wascared to death. My husband was able to catcg her though. That stupid leash was brand spankin new.[:@] Anyhow, she is a runner.

But love is starting to build in us. I think she already loves us, especially my kids. Sally loves nothing better than to sit on my oldest son's lap and be petted.

Could I suggest a harness for walking her?  An Easy Walk harness has the ring in the front and makes it more difficult for her to pull, but even a regular harness takes any tension off her neck.  Trachial damage is rampant in small dogs because if they do pull, the trachia can be damaged, sometimes badly.
 
I'd suggest supervising the play, but really, Sally will let the big girl know when she has had enough or if something is too rough.

Gentle leader as in the halter type?   I wouldn't use that if she has a fragile neck. Ack!  Double ack!  Don't do it man.

 I would go for the premier easy walk harness.

I can't wait to see pictures of both girls!!  I'm glad they seem to like each other.  Good luck finding the best way to walk her.

I am so confused about stuff. Its seems like everytime I read one thing, there is just as much to contradict what I read. THings that seem logcal to me at one time, seem very illogical after some different reading...and then logical again if I read some more. I really want to do right by both my dogs, but holy cow is it confusing to wade through all the contradictory information.

What we have is a gentle leader head collar. According to the packaging information it is supposed to take pressure OFF the front of the neck and put it on the back of the neck. The brand name is Premiere. I hate that I spent $$ on it and it might be the wrong one. Sigh. So very confused. It seemed to be working, she wasn't pulling nearly so much.

If it is the wrong one, does anyone know if it is returnable if it has been worn a couple of times?

Here are some pics of my Heidi girl. I don't have any of Sally yet. She moves too quickly for my camera.
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b221/RebeckaK/wishbone1.jpg
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b221/RebeckaK/heidi.jpg

I am not sure how to post insode the body. The first link is titled Wishbone because that is what the shelter called her. we had to change her name because I kept thinking of her as a male.

It will only hurt her if she is lunging on it or you're yanking on it, so if she is already pulling less I wouldn't worry.  And as for all the contradictions..... they say the only thing two dog trainers will agree on is that the third one is wrong!  And it's very true!

Tip:  Any time you stop or any time you see anything like another dog, person, great big lorry, cat, children, horse..... anything that might trigger her to be scared or excited, get her attention on you with the help of a treat and the headcollar and get her to sit - if she's already "locked on" to something you've left it too late!  Give yourself the advantage of distance so she has the best chance of success.  Give it as wide a berth as you can so you can keep her focussed on you, over time you won't need to be far from it at all and she will find it fairly easy to still pay attention to you.

This will do 3 things: 
1.  It will gradually lower any reactivity she has to external "triggers" and will teach her a positive association with them (I'm assuming you don't know how much socialisation she's had)
3.  It will teach her to focus on you when she sees them - if you are consistent she should eventually generalise it to anything new that she is unsure of. 
3.  It will mean she does not get the opportunity to lunge towards something she wants to investigate, risking hurting herself on the headcollar.

I would do this with any new dog or puppy I had now, it's so simple and easy to do and so generally useful.  It's helped prevent our staffy mix becoming a cat chaser and helped her cope with traffic which she used to find scary.  Any time she sees something shes not sure of she sticks close and sits, watching it and us.  I really think its helped her be more responsive to us in general even in the most distracting of situations.

make sure that when you first bring them home that your original dog is the first to be pet. This helps with the jelousy issue. I would reccomend seperate eating dishes but alot of dogs will share water dishes. just monitor when your new pup is drinking how heidi reacts to it. It seems like your new pup is still young and smaller so i would check into whether or not she needs to eat puppy food. Also check with the rescue and ask what they feed her so that you can do some mixing of the new and old food for a while so that there are no tummy aches. I dont reccomend taking them to the dog park unless there are no other dogs so that they are forced to pay attention to each other.
With the toys just monitor heidi may have an issue with sharing a particular toy. Just always watch them together for the first little while. Good luck with your new pup

Well of course the humans are all higher on the totem pole than any of the dogs. [] But they still have a hierarchy among themselves and giving preferential treatment to the low man on the totem pole is not good.

I would say no, no, no to a gentle leader for a dog with a sensitive neck. I've heard from vet techs before that they frequently see neck injuires in dogs that are walked with head halters like the gentle leader and the halti. If you use them perfectly then it won't be a problem, but if there's a little slack in the leash and the dog darts after a squirrel for instance, it will sharply pull their neck to the side. AND as you've already found, dogs can slip out of head halters. That's why the halti comes with a little safety device which is a thin little piece of leash that you hook to a regular collar.

The most important thing with dogs that pull on the leash is training and taking the reward out of leash pulling. Dogs pull to move forward, if you stop or turn around and go the other way they don't get rewarded. If you keep walking while they're pulling then you'll end up with a dog that pulls like a freight train.

I also recommend using a harness. There are different ones that are designed to help with pulling; the Easy Walk harness is one of them. It has a martingale in the front that the leash attaches to. Here's a link:

http://www.premier.com/pages.cfm?id=74

BUT, with an escape artist I would be a little worried that they could wriggle out of it. If I were you I'd probably get Premier's Surefit harness.

http://www.premier.com/pages.cfm?id=78

But they still have a hierarchy among themselves and giving preferential treatment to the low man on the totem pole is not good

Dogs are smart enough to get that the rewards are doled out for good behaviour and are not rank related.  As long as you are at the top (in control of all resources and good things in life, using NILIF) reinforcing their rank is not necessary and will cause problems if you get it wrong.

[color=#cc6699]If you use them perfectly then it won't be a problem, but if there's a little slack in the leash and the dog darts after a squirrel for instance, it will sharply pull their neck to the side

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Good lead training and keeping the dog focussed on you (as above) will prevent this happening although I'll concede there's risk which you wouldn't have with the harness....  OTOH headcollars give you control over the dogs head and help with training because you can redirect their attention on to you more easily.  Re the getting out of it, normally they can't if it is fitted right, but for safety get a double end for your lead and attach one end to the halter and one to her collar.  Gives you more control and she will not be able to slip away from you.

  The most important thing with dogs that pull on the leash is training and taking the reward out of leash pulling. Dogs pull to move forward, if you stop or turn around and go the other way they don't get rewarded. If you keep walking while they're pulling then you'll end up with a dog that pulls like a freight train.

Yup!

Well of course the humans are all higher on the totem pole than any of the dogs. But they still have a hierarchy among themselves and giving preferential treatment to the low man on the totem pole is not good.

I know what your saying and in a perfectly logical world, it would make complete sense, but speaking from firsthand experience, what Chuffy said about the heirarchy not being rigid is very true.  Maybe someone with extensive behaviorial training would be able to discern which of my dogs is dominant and when, but I've seen it change and then change again.  Here's something I felt happened in our case.  Buffy, our older girl, seemed to be dominant and we'd had her many years before we brought Sassy home.  So, we did all the things we thought might help to reinforce that.  We fed Buffy first, greeted her first, etc.  Well, all the while Sassy was jockeying for top dog position and all we did was create confusion and make Sassy even more jealous and...well, bitchy, and she took it out on Buffy.  After meeting with a behaviorist, we finally focused on being strong leaders ourselves and not trying to elect either of them into a role that wasn't appropriate.  It didn't cure the problem, but it did help.