Forty Days and Forty Nights with the boy we know as Django.
It’s been epic.
Charlton Heston Biblical Epic.
He has his own food bowl, bed, blanket,rope toys, collar, a new harness, and still has all the common sense and manners of a four month old pup. Trouble is, as I’ve said before, he stands almost 24 inches at the shoulder, weighs around 60lbs and has a power-to-weight ratio far greater than that of a human. His inclination to steal food of any kind from any place at any cost continues to be a challenge, although to be fair, it’s not quite as bad as it was initially. It remains however, his single most difficult characteristic and any perceived improvement is in part because we have become much more fastidious in our habits. His social interaction with other dogs remains entirely good natured although at times too boisterous for some. As you might imagine, the whole size issue has little bearing on how dogs respond to each other and Django has sent more than one dog spinning in the air in his attempts to play. Sometimes he seems too demanding for other dogs, trying to provoke games of ‘chase’ when the other party really doesn’t want to. In fact, on occasion, he has been nipped pretty hard as the other dog signals their annoyance. Just recently he stood, baffled and even a little intimidated as a terrier which stood about as high as his knee, jumped and snapped, biting him more than once. Never though has he responded in kind even when, as happened once, he was bitten on the tip of his ear badly enough to draw blood. Ironically, given KiKi’s difficulty with strange dogs and our fear that she may do them harm, her reactions to Django’s excesses have never gotten out of control. Undaunted by his size, she will nip him when she wants him to back off, stiffen and stand square on to him to make it clear that she is prepared to fend him off, or run back to our side to escape his attentions, relying on us to calm him down. Just as we experienced with KiKi, we have to try to second-guess what Django knew before to a degree, and then put that aside and deal with him as he is now, the 60lb pup nutcase. We look forward to trying to cook Christmas Dinner this year with this bold boy around the place.