I Must Have Dreamed A Thousand Dreams

Wolfgang has been part of our family for just over three weeks. It has been a difficult transition, moving from one dog to two, not only for me and Shawn but for Stella as well.

Stella is a friendly, affectionate dog; her problem is not aggression or hostility, her problem is figuring out boundaries. Stella is boundary-less. We go to the dog park and she runs in like she owns the place. She will approach any dog - big or small, young or old - and expect them to love her as much as she instantly loves them.

We weren't concerned about Stella not liking Wolfgang; rather we were concerned that she might like him too much. Stella is a muscular 23 pounds of exuberance. Wolfgang isn't meek but he does weigh under 5 pounds (he weighed in at 4.7 lbs at our last vet visit.)

When we first brought Wolfgang home, Stella was very interested in him. When she figured out that he was sticking around, she became less curious and more frowny.


Before bringing Wolfgang home, I had high hopes of the two pups being buddies. I wanted Stella to have a playmate, a partner-in-crime. Instead, we ended up with two puppies who only paid attention to each other when they were fighting over food or wrestling. In the first two weeks, Stella was most likely to be found trying to death-roll Wolfgang and Wolfgang could be found hanging from poor Stella's jowls by his razor-sharp puppy teeth.

death-roll!

puppy teeth!

My biggest photographic success was while Wolfgang was asleep and Stella was focused entirely on a treat that Shawn was holding off-camera.


Until last night.

Last night Shawn and I were hanging out in bed watching the hockey game. Stella was curled up on the end of the bed chewing a bone and Wolfgang was sleeping on my lap. At some point, Wolfgang got up and meandered over to Stella. This is not unusual -whenever one of the pups has a bone or chew toy, the other pup tries to take it away. What was unusual was the lack of chaos that we've come to expect. When we realized what was happening, Shawn stealthily crept out of the room (as to not cause a disturbance) and returned with the camera. We needed photographic proof:

I call this shot "Victory"