Martha Ritchie added one such member to her family recently. This new friend came in the guise of a German Shepherd pup. One of Martha’s friends had a German Shepherd, and apparently the dog "got into a little trouble." And since Martha was a good friend, she was offered one of the pups. Martha took one look at one particular puppy and fell in love. And the feeling was mutual. "It was more like the dog picked me out," Martha said of her encounter with her new friend, which she named Sheba. But since Sheba wasn’t really used to her new digs, Martha worried about how puppy would take to being alone. So she enlisted the help of ActiveHome and XRay vision.

Martha set up a room for Sheba during the day, and made it as comfortable as she could. Martha put in a portable stereo, and a couple of lamps. She also put in an XCam2 so that she could see what the dog was doing during the day. Then, while at work, Martha would log on to her computer and check on Sheba. At various times Martha would turn on a lamp and then turn it off. She would also turn on the stereo for a while, and the combination of those two seemed to ease Sheba’s anxiety.

Often times when Martha looked in on Sheba she was pacing the floors and acting very nervous. "When the light would go on," Martha told us, "Sheba would lift up her head and look around, and she would relax a bit. But then I’d start the stereo, and Sheba would go over to her bed and lie down and take a nap. It’s almost as if she sensed somebody was there, and she could relax."

Martha would let the music play for a while, but she didn’t want to leave the stereo on all day. "I just didn’t feel right about leaving it on all day." So instead she would turn it on and off at various intervals.

"Sheba seems to be doing very well lately," Martha told us. "By alternating when I turn on and off the lights and the stereo, she knows that she isn’t alone, and she’s okay with that." And Martha can use XRay Vision to look in on Sheba any time she wants just to see how things are going. No matter where she is, Martha and Sheba are never far away. All Martha has to do is find a computer.

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