Solomon update

These first few days with Solomon have been more of a challenge than we anticipated. But its getting smoother each day. We hired the help of a professional dog trainer to give us the right tools to train Solomon. We are getting 6 sessions. She is really good at what she does, and we're already training him with the tools she gave us. She came yesterday for the first session and we hired a babysitter to get the older two kids out of the house so we could concentrate. We have "homework" to do. The best thing anybody (and us as a family) can do who walks in our house for the first time is to completely ignore the dog. That immediately "ranks" the person in the dog's mind as leader of the pack. In a dog's world they're always sizing up people to find out who's the leader and in nature, the leader always returns to their pack and ignores them. So that's a clue to anybody coming to visit - just ignore our "dog in training" and let us tell you how to introduce yourself to him. There's a lot more to it. We have learned to correct him with "ehh ehh" for no and "yes!" for praise instead of saying "no" to him, because we say no to our kids...and the dog needs different words to associate with his behavior. He's in his crate most of the day until he learns to tell us he needs to use the bathroom. We have a routine to help him learn his name, help him focus, help him walk on a leash, learn to sit, lay down, etc. It is all very basic and the homework training sessions we do with him should last 3-4 minutes max or he gets mental overload and too distracted. We really want our dog to be well behaved, this is a step in the right direction. Its hard to think we're making any progress because he's still a 3 month old puppy who still tries to chew on everything, but time will move on, he will grow, and become calmer. This is pretty much what he's doing all day: