Bossy dogs
Cinnamon has been a bossy dog lately. I have been a weak dog owner. Some people call weak dog owners permissive dog owners. Okay. That too. So what is a permissive dog owner? It’s a dog owner who is lax about the rules. The dogs are on the furniture. The dogs are on the bed. The dogs bat at you to get petted. The dogs run the house. Well, I’m not that lax.
Cinnamon is 5 years old. Baxter is 5 years old. Baxter is about 6 months older than Cinnamon. There are dog rules. The dogs aren’t supposed to be eating people food. The dogs can be on the couch. They are not supposed to be on the bed. They can run all over the house except for two spare rooms. They bang on the back door to be let outside to run all over the back yard. Dog toys from the house are not allowed outside. Stuff from the yard isn’t allowed inside the house. Those were the rules.
A little more than a year ago I got a second home. The rules at the second home are different. The dogs are not allowed on any furniture at all. They still bang to go outside. There are almost no dog toys, only 6. There is a dog bed in every room and two in the master bedroom and two in the living room. They are only supposed to eat dog food.
Now Cinnamon got arthritis due to her history of distemper and started limping very badly. She just wasn’t doing well. She was also overweight. So she and Baxter got put on a diet and got more exercise. She slimmed way down. Baxter lost some weight but still is a big dog. I felt sorry for how badly she was limping. I let her up on the bed at night. She was thrilled. She was the dog princess. Baxter wasn’t able to jump up onto the bed. I wasn’t able to lift him. He’d look up over the edge of the bed and whine for a bit then lie down on the dog bed on the floor. Eventually, I got sorry for him. He’s too big to use those doggy stairs so I covered an ottoman that was at the right height for him to climb up and he could make it up to the bed.
Cimmamon got upset by having to share the King size bed with Baxter. She glared at him. She went over to him and batted at him. She flea-ed him. She did everything she could think of to keep him from getting on the bed. Finally she blocked how he got up and she growled at him. He didn’t want to push the issue and he’d back down. He’s bigger than her. We had him first and there she was bullying him.
Now we’ve established new rules. Dogs can be on the bed in California not in Nevada. Cinnamon isn’t allowed to keep Baxter off the bed. They are supposed to eat only dog food. They keep dog toys inside the house and stuff from outside stays outside. Baxter is supposed to be the chief dog. Cinnamon is supposed to be the second dog. If that balance gets too out of wack we get dog bullying. Cinnamon is back to not being such a bossy dog and all is back to normal. I’m still a lax dog owner but I can live with that.
The house looks like PetCo or PetSmart uses our house for storage if the warehouse doesn’t have room for all the dog toys or dog beds.
