Getting schooled by the Big Dogs -

We have spent the last week with a sweet little boxer puppy named Laila. She came to stay with us while her family headed to Indiana for the holiday. She lives with a family of four - mother, father and two boys - plus one old boxer big dog - Otis. With a stay at home Dad and two young boys, this puppy was used to some serious play time. Otis is an older slower dog with the patience of Job - the puppy can crawl all over him and sleep with Otis - but Otis doesn't have a harsh bone in his old boxer body.

When little 5 month old Laila arrived at our house, my first instinct was to scoop her up and protect her from the beastie boys that live with Kristin and I. I held her in my lap and scolded the big dogs for barking and squealing and creating a raucous for this sweet faced doe eyed bag of boxer bones. She has a little under bite in her lips that make her look pouty but put together with that face she just oozed of slightness and frailty.

Laila's Mom told us she was worried Laila would destroy something. She sent Laila with a bag of Natural Balance food and three toys. She told us she didn't think Laila was the smartest dog in the world. She had a hard time leaving that little puppy though, and the 11 yo boy came back to say good bye to his puppy on a second trip to our house before leaving town, and on the second day away he called to see how she was doing while they were gone.

We asked about how long her walks were went - she doesn't walk on a leash yet. She doesn't like it. Does she go to the dog park? Nope, she does not. How does she get exercise we asked? She is a puppy, she must need exercise and our yard is just not big enough, we didn't think. More concerning is the fact that we had no children to tossle around on the floor with little Laila.

As it turns out we had nothing to worry about in terms of exercise. Laila was going to be in school - and Gromit was at the head of the class. It would exhaust her in ways that exercise could not - poor Laila! That big white goof who wormed his way into more hearts riding in the back seat of the car with the passengers and laying his chin on a knee, carefully chewing his bones on his matt and not the carpet - the sensitive white beast that launches himself at breakneck speed but suddenly slows down when he sees an Airdale at the dog park from a distance and realizes her hips aren't quite right and he still greets her just more softly, the same guy who welcomed Chewie by sharing the back seat and his favorite toy in a field on the drive back from Milwaukee - my big white boy became the aloof, mannerly, crabby old man dog. He did not have a minute for the crazy out of control activity of the little boxer puppy.

Chewie tried to follow Gromit's lead on this. He tried for about a day to growl and snark and use his big dog voice to scare the puppy back. And the puppy, in all her sweetness rolled over for him to sniff and curled her little nub of a tail around the end of her butt. And when Chewie would look away that tail would come out and wag and wag. No barking a lot of wagging.

I of course was slightly disgusted with our big dogs. What were they thinking - this was the cutest puppy in the world. So what if she jumped all over us all - and I do mean all of us - she flew through the air at Gromit and Chewie - landing paws on faces. Gromit was appalled to say the least. C'mon though, she was little and boney and you could hardly feel those paws when they landed on you. Give her a break, she is full of energy and joyful.

We fed them separately to avoid the ultimate boundary crossing. I didn't want to witness anything past snarkiness from my big guys - I wanted to still love them in the morning.

Then I remembered something about Gromit and Chewie both that I have written about before in a blog. When they were little puppies - okay, Gromit was never little, but he was a puppy - their friend Just Joe explained manners to them in very simple, quick and single interaction. I don't even remember how it happened just a lot of noise and there were four of us to watch and make sure no one was hurt but none of us were sure what made Joe need to make a correction with Gromit and Chewie - it happened once with each of them, they crossed his boundary once, no one was hurt, no contact was made by any of the dogs and it never happened again and G&C have to this day shown the utmost respect for the shorter figured Jack Russell. Suffice it to say, Just Joe, is not shorter in personality! Also, they play to this day and are very relaxed around each other. Dogs just don't seem to hold grudges.

So I pulled out my book Canine Body Language: A Photographic Guide Interpreting the Native Language of the Domestic Dog by Brenda Aloff. I checked on some of the posturing that was going on at our house trying to figure out if everything was as it should be... Within a couple of days Chewie had mellowed to the point of playing with the puppy and even letting her share his food. The thing that really got them both, was the fact that one of her toys squeaked - they both wanted in on that action and had to let go of the distance. They both played with her, Chewie more than Gromit. And at the end of 10 days, Gromit let her sleep in his favorite chair and he on the floor next to it. They had worked out the rules and she was incredibly respectful of Gromit.

I started to wonder what Gromit thought when he saw the puppy jumping all over me. He doesn't jump all over me. But when he was a puppy he did jump all over me and I learned how to stop this behavior. I bet I looked pretty silly to Gromit letting that puppy jump all over me - so I took a lesson from Gromit - we taught the puppy not to jump on us. I played aloof when she jumped on me. I said absolutely nothing but just turned away and wouldn't look at her - just like Gromit. Walla - it worked.

Then to soothe my human desire to make the sweet puppy feel good, we taught her how to sit. This way we could give her a treat. It was very fun. This Gromit could get behind and he did - he lined right up for treats.

I refused to make an attempt to make any of those growling noises or curl my lip or even bark loudly. Just doesn't seem like good human manners - something I learned from my mother not Gromit.