Who's Leading This Pack?

Bobby is staying here for the week. Bobby is a dog, a Brooklyn Chow Hound if you must know the breed. He weighs between 60 and 70 pounds and he's lanky and has the biggest paws allowed by law on a dog of his height. Age-wise he's somewhere over a year but under two...physically. Mentally and emotionally and energetically he's a puppy, a really big, really strong, really motivated puppy.

This all puts him in Emily's weight class and pretty much makes him a behavioral clone of her. So, of course, I love him. Also, he has floppy hound lips and it's just so damn cute I can hardly stand it.

Back in the day when Pony Express found Em we had some first hand experience with herding young dogs. We lived with one young dog. Then we found Emily. That branded us suckers so we tended to have doggie guests. The final results of the research is that one dog is one dog. You have one dog, you deal with one dog, you have some handle on the situation. Two dogs might as well be ten dogs. The difference between walking and feeding and training and disciplining and just plain navigating around two dogs as opposed to one is the difference between walking around the block and running a marathon. Add a third dog? Or a fourth? You just walked to the subway after your marathon. The difference is negligible to the point of being difficult to notice. There are some leash issues and you need more poop bags and you definitely have to remember to fill the water dish more often but it's really nothing if you've already done the switch from one to two.

So I've got 2 dogs right now. I know I just made it sound like a bad thing but really, while it's a hard thing it's good too. (Quick, name one other thing with those attributes.)

A little while ago I was curled up on the couch checking my e-mail and the dogs were sort of half assedly sharing Bobby's dog bed (dude, this dog travels with more stuff than I do, my dog is so deprived, comparitively she's living a spartan life) and the cats were chilling around me and everyone was just digesting. Then I guess Emily had had enough of the digesting so she popped up and started poking Bobby in the neck with her nose until her responded. He, of course, responded by finding the only toy in the house with a squeaker and retreated to the couch, pressed up as close to me as possible, squeaking at regular intervals. Emily moved her attack to the living room and has been alternately licking out Bob's jowls (ewe!) and hauling him off the couch by his collar.

Who is getting the bad end of this? Nobody with 4 legs, that's for sure.

The thing is, I'm kind of loving it. I love that the girl is playing. I'm hoping that all this interaction will keep Bobby properly exercised so I won't have to take him to off leash and leave Em behind (feels like cheating on her). I love to hear dogs in the house. After the initial shock the squeaking and growling doesn't really get to me.

If we're walking with beings (people, dogs, she's not picky) that Em knows she gets a little fretful if someone peels off the group, breaking up the pack. It's a dog thing, lots of dogs do it. I know how they feel. It's nice to have the pack around me, doing their thing.

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This post would be better with pictures. But because I'm a hoarder of information and have filled my computer all the way up to the tippy top I don't have the room to download any. Fortunately somewhere in my youth or childhood I must have done something good because the Chili Family is going to fix that for me. That's not going to do anything for this particular post, though. After that maybe I'll post some belated pictures.