My decision, I’ll live with it.

Now that the girls are all rather nice dogs that come when called and don’t (usually) jump up on people, know how to sit and stay nicely, and head for their chew toys when they want a nice soothing nibble I’m starting to feel confident that they can be around my little treasures without causing too much damage.

We still have a few issues though, it’s impossible to do any gentle art with a 130 lbs Great Dane on my lap, I’ve had Greta for 8+ years and have still yet to fully convince her of this point, although if I tell her to go lay on the bed she will happily comply. Georgia on the other hand is completely unconvinced that an entire queen sized bed is just as good as my lap, or that I really want to pay attention to a bunch of string or fabric instead of devoting every waking moment towards staring into her deep soulful eyes and feeding her tripe. Sadie (aka the dog formerly known as Sydney) prefers her little love seat in my bedroom so needlework isn’t much of an issue with her, for some reason the spinning wheel sets her off into a series of long and mournful howls which is then repeated in chorus (and in a different key) throughout the neighborhood; this limits my spinning to daylight hours, away from Sadie, in an undisclosed secure location with the shades drawn.

The typical view of my craft efforts includes a dog nose. A very large dog nose connected to a very large dog.

I’m not quite to the point where I feel comfortable taking my nice clothes, paintings or guitar out of the closet, but I can sneak in a little knitting and needlework if I’m careful to put it all away when I’m done.

I just want you all to know that when I decided we should take both dogs, it was not because of a flawed pop-ethology theory of doggie buddies. Obviously, the dogs had decided to lace their drool with a psycho-reactive mind control drug and used state of the art hypnotic suggestion technology on me. I was helpless to resist.

Right, so want to see the babies?

Sydney, Georgia and me on their first night

The marle (gray & black in the foreground) is Sydney, and the fawn (standing next to me) is Georgia. I decided that since they weren’t trained (at all) and didn’t recognize their original names that it would be better to give rechristen them, both are 18 months so adapting to their new identities was a fairly graceful affair. According to the original owners neither is leash trained, housebroken, or obedience trained but they are “kinda” crate trained (and I have a huge neon sign saying “Sucker” across my forehead.)

The first thing Georgia did (post-butt sniffing) was check out the kennel (which our dogs don’t use, because they have our nice comfy bed to take over in the middle of the night.) Danes are not outside dogs, and Labs really are way too social to want to sleep alone, so the kennel is more or less for the benefit of Elle, the chicken, who thinks it’s a swimmingly great vacation home when she needs a break from her coop.

Wouldn’t you know it? When we brought Sydney into the mix, and all the butts were sniffed she went right over and started checking out the kennel.

Georgia

Georgia is unconvinced that the big pillow on the floor is actually meant for her use. Because she’s such a big girl (seriously huge– even in Dane terms) at such a young age, we have to be very careful with her joints– which means convincing her that the pads and pillows around the house are for her use.

Syd and her blankie

And then there’s Syd, who is only too happy to declare that everything is hers. Sydney’s a sweety but she’s under socialized with other dogs, hates/fears leashes, distracted by every little thing, insecure and possessive. On the upside; she likes people, she’s already more confident and really digs training. I’m going to ignore the leash thing for a while and just work on her basic manners and obedience skills, I hate putting off something as important as leash training but I don’t want to traumatize her by forcing the issue.

Greta seems to have taken over the potty training for the young’uns– so there haven’t been any accidents in the house. I never trained her to keep an eye on other dogs, but for some reason she’s taken it upon herself to alert us when someone needs to go outside and to reward them when they are done with a barrage of head nuzzles and licks. There is no doubt, Greta is the most awesome dog– ever.