We understand that KiKi’s rehoming will be unlike our past experience with our other dogs. The first three years after bringing Leica and Flash home had been a rollercoaster of learning on the fly. We were each used to having dogs around the house throughout our childhood, and we had read up on what we might expect and how we might deal with what was to come. The reality, as anyone who owns or has owned a dog will know, proved to be more complicated. Frankly, I still think we were pretty lucky all things considered. House-training was a breeze, we lost a few socks early on and Flash chewed a tabletop once while she was still teething, but overall it was pretty easy. The sibling rivalry between Leica and Flash never amounted to much. Leica was clearly a little smarter, taller and stronger than her sister, but they soon settled into a pattern. Leica never tried to dominate Flash to any significant degree, and they arrived at an understanding which we tried to reinforce, never allowing any territorial squabbles or food guarding behaviours to develop. Lead training proved close to impossible though, unless we kept them apart they would each pull like sled dogs to get ahead of each other. Through all the years they were together, with all the rough and tumble behaviour you might expect, neither of them ever acted in an aggressive way towards each other or to any other dogs they came across.

One of our greatest concerns is that KiKi, being much younger and stronger than Leica, might try to assert herself to a degree which Leica would find distressing or which might result in an injury to one or both dogs.