r/DoubleMerles

I wanted to introduce my newest rescue, Cooper. The rescue said he’s a purebred mini Aussie double Merle. He’s completely deaf and he seems to be somewhat visually impaired too. He has misshapen pupils. He’s beautiful and sweet. He’s doing great with our other dogs. Although his herding instincts are very strong. He’s starting to herd them. I am buying an embark DNA kit to test him for his health and curiosity about his breed. Before there are judgements, he hurt his snout at the rescue when they attempted to crate him. All they knew was he was dumped because he was deaf. He’s about 2.5 yrs old and 35 lbs. He has a bushy tail and very large paws.

We’ve had our girl now for a while and she’s great, but she doesn’t seem to cope well with being home for short periods of time. I’m at home with her basically all the time except small errands like going to the store. We thought it was getting better as we haven’t heard her bark when coming back lately, but today there was a note from the neighbours that she had been barking the whole time I was gone. 🥲

Since we live in an apartment we have to solve this pretty quickly… I’ve had two other dogs and this has never been an issue, though they’ve often had the company of each other (now always but mostly). I don’t even remember it being an issue to “train” them they just weaned into it.

Help very much appreciated !!!

Edit: we give her lots of bones to chew, toys etc and make sure to walk her before we go. We do not make a big deal out of leaving/returning. And we’ve started out going in separate rooms etc before leaving the apartment.