The Little Bear Dog Blog

Annie has been in residence for four weeks today. She’s made great progress already. The Eliza Doolittle of the dog world, this little urchin has learned to sit, give a paw, wait politely for her food and even picks up her feet to have her harness put on.  Today she offered up both paws for a treat so we have a ‘Meerkat’ or beg in the making there too.  She’s taken to all of this with great enthusiasm and looks so terribly proud of herself every time she learns something new.

She and The Cat are ‘free-ranging’ too.  Annie, although curious is very gentle around her and  on the couple of occasions The Cat has hissed at her, has shown her preference for flight over fight each time.

Little Bear however, remains invisible to her.  Despite his best efforts to initiate play she’s just not interested. He’s like a bug, climbing all over her, chewing her neck and dancing in circles while he shoulder nudges her. Her reaction is to ignore him.  She walks around the house with LB, limpet like on her neck and then when she’s had enough, she lays down and ignores him in comfort.

Her Schnauzer blind spot also extends to doorways as she frequently barges him out of the way without a by-you-leave. Having fixed the jumping up swiftly, I’m not as worried about his back as I was, but we still have to remind her about her manners as she just doesn’t seem to see him.  The back incident happened on  the first day they were together – she jumped up to greet me over the baby gate and came down on top of him, nearly squashing the little fella flat.  He squealed and told her off and rightly so – she weighs three times what he does! I checked him and he was fine, just a little dented pride bless him.

His perseverance is admirable; he’s had that many cold shoulders I would have expected him to have given up by now, but it’s heartbreaking to watch the constant rejection.  It must be like having the kid in the park that the other kids won’t play with. I’ve tried to encourage them to play; I get the toy box out and although she’ll help herself to a toy and sometimes has a little bounce with it, she’s not even interested in playing with me or OH.  She had a polite round of fetch with us the first week, but hasn’t shown any interest since. Neither is she interested in tug a war or the like. Maybe this is normal for a rescue dog? I know my Mum once adopted a feral cat who had no concept of play until the day she died – we concluded that life on the streets hadn’t afforded her such luxuries. But apart from her time on the run, she’s was well looked after and lived with other dogs so she doesn’t really seem to fit the same mould.

So LB continues to be a little grumpy. We’re walking them separately for now because she’s as reactive to other dogs as he is and we don’t want them to spark off one another. This does mean that I’m able to give him my full attention and today we had a wonderfully long walk in the park together. We met his little Bichon-Poo friend and they scampered around like idiots playing chase and generally larking about like idiots. It was wonderful to see as LB looked so happy. Let’s hope that one day he and Annie can play the same way.