[Dailydrool] yes on the leather couch plus puppy integration questions

[Jennifer Myka]

I saw the posting about the leather couch.  I have had leather seats in my car since 2001 and my Betsy has not yet scratched them at all.  We bought a leather couch and chair about 2 years ago and she is on both all the time.  They still look great!  Our old fabric couch was about destroyed by her nails, even though she wasn't really trying to scratch it or anything.  Our couch and chair are a sort of soft leather.  A secondary benefit is that if she accidentally sneaks in with dirty, muddy tummy and paws, the mud will dry off and can easily be removed from the leather.  Since she does this fairly often, we have been thrilled and our furniture looks much better.  A wet cloth works when fabric would have to be cleaned.  Hope this helps!

Second - I had posted a while ago looking for a female Basset puppy for this spring/summer.  I finally found my girl with foster parents through a local shelter.  I get to pick her up next Saturday after she gets spayed next Thursday.  Anyhow, our biggest concerns in looking for a Basset puppy was that the girl would be young enough so that our almost 10-year-old Betsy would want her, too.  The puppy (we're trying to figure out who she is!) is going to be almost 2-1/2 months old, and she seemed quite calm and polite when I met her the other day.  She walked over to their dogs in crates and sat down in a submissive puppy way wagging her tiny cute tail.  Does anyone have any suggestions on how to best integrate the new puppy into the family?  I've never had two dogs at once before so I'm feeling a bit unsure about this.  I was thinking that I needed to be sure that the puppy knows what is hers, and to teach her to leave Betsy's things alone.  Any
 suggestions are greatly appreciated - we really want the new baby to feel comfortable with us and Betsy, but also to try to be sure that our Betsy won't feel displaced in any way.  We are planning on crate training the girl for potty-training.  Thanks!