Yesterday afternoon I went to pick up Gracie, a new ESRA rescue who needed a place to stay for 2.5 days between her Montgomery foster parents leaving for vacation and her Birmingham adoptive parents coming back from vacation. Gracie is fine meeting Tara. Tara generally doesn't like pipsqueaks, but Gracie seems to know and leaves Tara alone. I gave Tara a pig ear to keep her occupied.
I then put Gracie in the wire crate in the livingroom while I took Tara out for potty (and Jake left free in the apartment). After we got back, I took Jake out potty and then Gracie started trying to play with Jake. I didn't want my downstairs neighbor to complain, so I tried to stop them. After calling Millie, I decided to turn off the light, but kept the TV on. Tara soon settled down and slept on the carpet. Jake tried to sleep on my bed with me, but Gracie kept going after him to get him to play. So I ended up sitting in the middle to separate them. And it took about another hour of my "wrestling" with Gracie to get her to calm down enough to settle down. The wrestling consisted of her keeping jumping on and off the bed, trying to play with Jake, and my keeping carrying her onto my bed about 20+ times (with her still tethered to my waist; my bed is pretty much a mattress on the ground, so there's not much for her to jump on and off). The persistence and patience paid off finally. Soon we all fall sleep.
Around 2 AM, we woke up to let the dogs out potty (Chuck and Celeste told me that's when they let the dogs out potty). I had realized that it's very hard for me to handle two dogs at the same time with Gracie's pulling on leash, so I took out my spare Gentle Leader. I do have a spare Easy Walk Harness also, but it's too big for Gracie (she needs a medium and I have a large), besides, the issue with walking her and Jake together is that Gracie would keep trying to play mount him. So I think the head halter works better in this case. I've not had any problem with her running out of the door. She has bonded with Jake and sees him as a big brother I guess, and she just wants to be with him and copying him, so if Jake's indoors, I don't think there is a problem with Gracie trying to run out. Also Jake is required to sit stay for me to put his leash on and before I open the door, I am also trying that with Gracie. She is getting it.
She is much better on head halter today. I think her imitating Jake has helped speeding up the progress. She will sit when I show her the head halter, and would remain sitting for me to put it on. I think she has realized putting the halter on means getting to go out. We need to work on more with sitting before coming back inside though (I would tell her sit also before taking off the halter).