Monday, November 30, 2009

Pooches: Picking a pack member

Picking a second dog to join our pack has been a difficult task, but we are very happy that it led us to Mr. B. When we started our search for Ms. M's own pooch, we were looking for a male dog that was younger than Ms. M, because we were looking to add another bully and we wanted to reduce the possibility of a power struggle. Our search led us to Mr. A, a 2 year old male pit bull mix. Curtis Scott did the introduction at Unleashed and they seemed to get along really well. Thus started our new chapter with Ms. M and Mr. A. In their initial meeting, Mr. A would listen to Ms. M's corrections and he would back down every so often as they played. However, after that initial meeting, Mr. A would not back down and I had to intervene whenever their playing got out of hand. Eventually Ms. M and Mr. A would play all the time and we would be woken up by two dogs running around our bedroom, growling, jumping, spittling, and barking. There would be dog hair and spittle all over the place: on the floor, furniture, bed, and even our food. After three weeks of living in complete chaos, we had to make the difficult decision that this was not working out. We decided to return Mr. A to his foster parents and resign to being a one dog household. Ms. M quickly went back to her routine and didn't miss Mr. A at all. Couple months later, I decided to browse PetFinder, for older male bullies and saw Mr. B on the search. Though he was in Kalamazoo, Michigan, he came within the first two pages, because there aren't too many male bullies over the age of 4 for adoption. Apparently older male bullies are not very adoptable and are quickly destroyed. Luckily for us, Jo Anne at the Kalamazoo Animal Rescue rescued Mr. B from the pound. Since we had experience with Mr. A, I had a whole list of questions that I asked Jo Anne before we even decided to meet Mr. B. After the lengthy conversation, we decided to drive down to Kalamazoo, Michigan to meet Mr. B. During the initial meeting, Ms. M and Mr. B played and ran around together, but an interesting happened when we took Mr. B with us to our campground, Ms. M and Mr. B didn't interact at all. Though we were all in the same tent, Mr. B and Ms. M basically ignored each other. They each slept on their own pet beds and in the next morning, they didn't even acknowledge each other. This was how we knew that Mr. B was our family's newest addition. Though Mr. B is older than Ms. M, he is submissive to Ms. M and seems to understand his place in the Schwang household. Don't tell Ms. M or A, but in my mind Mr. B is number one and my best friend.

7 comments:

Joana Pereira said...

They look so comfy together. Lovely pooches.

Congratulations to the blog...i'm so addicted

Kiss**

Kari in Alaska said...

we had to go through some searching as well to find our Mesa :) Baily will always be my favorite though, even though everyone else says Mesa is their fav!

laura said...

Just like an old married couple!

Anonymous said...

Just found your blog. Pitties and food reviews? you have won my heart!

Jenn said...

Integrating pets takes time, sometimes. My two dogs didn't acknowledge each other for over a month.

And THEN they went through the tearing-thru-the-house-sounding-like-they-were-destroying-each-other.

That passed after a few days, and they are now buds. We are happy!

Jenn said...

Integrating pets takes time, sometimes. My two dogs didn't acknowledge each other for over a month.

And THEN they went through the tearing-thru-the-house-sounding-like-they-were-destroying-each-other.

That passed after a few days, and they are now buds. We are happy!

Unknown said...

This post was just what I needed to read today, it is encouraging that other people have had to face returning a pet to foster when things are just not working out-even if you would really like them too and try really hard. It also gives me hope that our perfect match is waiting. PS I am so glad you guys got Mr. B, your blog just wouldn't be the same without him :)

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