It’s been a week.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been a week. Mugen and Lucy or “you dorks” as I have come to call them, play together like they have been the best of friends since the day they were born. I love watching them play. I also love that Lucy is so very smart. When she’s had enough of Mugen she just sits down next to me and puts her head in my lap and then I make the puppy go away for a while.
Lucy isn’t a fan of sharing her food, but I’m okay with that. The house is big enough to keep the food separate. I’m starting to switch her onto California Natural today… and she ate the quarter cup I put in with her Pedigree… and is watching Mugen butt tuck around the parlor and dining room with this look of amazement… oh… wait, she just gave him a hip check and now they’re rolling around in the floor again and chewing on each other’s tags.
Does anyone else’s dogs do this? It sounds REALLY gross. Makes my skin crawl actually.
I have discovered that I have to separate Mugen from Lucy for at least a couple of hours every day, not so much for her… but for him. He is bonding with her very quickly and he’s forgetting the house rules. If I separate him for obedience work for an hour or so, I have my puppy back and he will stop playing when I call his name again.
Lucy on the other hand, is learning the house rules. Nothing in life is free in this house. She sits before I do anything or give her anything. I am teaching her to down, which… she’s starting to get the hang of. I’m not sure how I’m going to teach her to “Stand” but we’ll get there. She’s fairly well food motivated… but I need to take away the treats quickly with her before I can even think about taking her to dog school. She doesn’t get irate about treats in front of Mugen, but I really don’t want to take the chance that she might get grouchy about it with someone else’s dog…
I’m not sure I *can* take her to dog school because she does seem to have an issue with other females as well, as I discovered at Petsmart this week when some doofus decided to bring his very cranky and in heat husky bitch to petsmart. Then the dork had the audacity to complain at me for bringing an aggressive dog to the pet store. The more I think about it the more I wish that I’d said, “Your dog is in heat moron. Who do you think the problem is exactly… me, or you?”
But… I’m too nice and won’t say those things.
Lucy walked away from her when told to do so, so I’m very pleased with the results I’ve had with her. She will let me take things away from her, even food, she will listen when I tell her to stop growling at the window and she’ll go back to her bed and wait for me to come get her. She’s just all around… a very good girl.
I joked with my husband that Lucy was the dog that nobody wanted. He said that he didn’t understand and I explained about her landing on death row at the shelter, about her being in boarding at a vet for a while and then living with her foster mom for almost a month before I took an interest and he looked at her as she was laying at the base of our sofa with Mugen happily licking at her paw and said, “Wow… those people were stupid.”
He’s right. They are.
Lucy is everything I could have asked for in a second dog and then some. She came with more training than I expected. She is very spatially aware, something I have NEVER had or even seen in a Lab. If she and Mugen are playing and I walk by and she bumps into my knee, she puts a stop to the game by pawing Mugen to the floor and waits for me to walk past before letting him up again. If she wags her tail and hits me, she stops wagging and moves herself an inch to the side before she’ll start wagging again. If she hits furniture, she doesn’t do this… only with people.
She loves little children. The little girl next door that Mugen loves to play with and has to go see every time she is outside is also the apple of Lucy’s eye. Lucy won’t drag me over to see her, but she will lick her face until she laughs and then she’ll calmly head back indoors with me. Usually, Lucy is a one or two swipe sort of girl.
Today… she gets her last tag. Her county animal license, which by law, I must acquire for her within 30 days of acquiring her. I also have to get Mugen’s this month and I’m not looking forward to it. Mugen’s will be expensive because there’s a tax on in tact animals in the county. I understand why they tax it, I don’t blame them and I don’t exactly mind paying it.
It’s just annoying me that I’m paying the price for the stupidity of others because I don’t allow Mugen off lead and I certainly don’t put him in situations that I cannot control (dog parks, petsmart, etc… ). But because there are some people out there who think that litters of unwanted puppies are somehow beneficial to their dogs… I get to pay 40$ to license my pup for the next year, possibly two, until his growth plates are closed.
At least I can say for sure that Lucy will never have this problem.
Someone had the forethought to care enough about her to have her spayed in her past.
Whoever that person was that dumped their dog in a field in the middle of nowhere…
… you are an idiot.
And thanks.
