One thing I hate at the end of year is all those articles about the year in review. After all, I lived through the year, I do not think I need someone else to tell me what happened. However, people apparently like a summary of the year around New Years so I will not disappoint them. 2011 was just another year where the world continued to go to the dogs. End of Summary. Now to end the year on a lighter note I will also let this post go to the dogs.<\/p>\n
My wife got me a dog for Christmas. He is a 14 month old German Shepherd with a dark brown coat and his name is Thor. He is near 90 pounds and looks a bit underweight and has some more filling out to do, so he probably will get well over 100 pounds. His head is huge like a wolf.\u00a0 Yes, this Thor is the Norse god of thunder, at least when we brought him home some of my other dogs thought so, and Thor came with papers to prove his pedigree.<\/p>\n
Thor was supposed to be a police dog but the deputy sheriff that raised him from a pup apparently got a girlfriend and that meant he needed to work a second job. Poor Thor was locked up all by himself in a small 100 square foot compound with a dog house. That enclosure probably also is the Ozark prototype for a future FEMA camp.<\/p>\n
Thor has some police training but just what commands will make him tear off someone’s arm is still unknown to me. The deputy fortunately did tell me the command to make him ease up. The command was something like\u00a0 “God have mercy” or was that “Thor have mercy”? Even so, Norse gods are not high on mercy.<\/p>\n
We already had five dogs before Thor arrived. I just got a pup about a month ago from friends who said that they thought his father was a 150 pound dog that was hanging around their property. I wanted a big boss dog to replace my fallen dog Bubba that died in the line of duty about a year ago. Bubba was a shepherd, retriever chow mix that was about 90 pounds unless he put on extra weight, which he often did. Bubba ruled the dog world where we lived and he was as strong the day he died (heart attack) as he was when he led dogs out of the dog pound. Only I know where his body is buried.<\/p>\n
I was a bit disappointed with the new pup Panda because it now looks like this dog is probably not going to get much more than 50 or 60 pounds. At 9 weeks old Panda looks like he is going to be a short-legged broad chested fearless powerful dog but he is no replacement for Bubba. I have no idea what breed I can compare Panda to at this point,\u00a0 since he is unique.<\/p>\n
Anyway, before I got that dog I had been telling my wife that I don’t want any more dogs anytime someone wanted to get rid of an extra puppy around here. Fortunately or unfortunately she came to the conclusion that I was not serious about no more dogs, when I took Panda. So she got me Thor for Christmas.<\/p>\n
We already had four other dogs. Blue, Tuffy, Sammy and Snoopy. Blue is 11 and he looks like an overweight big hound. He is 100 pounds but he is fat. He has cushings disease which makes him hungry all the time and Blue has also gone blind. I am surprised that he has hung on this long. I did not think he would make it through the summer.<\/p>\n
Tuffy is a 11-year-old porky Blue Healer. He earned that Tuffy name after someone abandoned him in the woods in the dead of winter because he had a bad case of the mange. We heard this dog out there in the woods for a few weeks but one day he showed up on our porch. Tuffy was a real mess and at death’s door when he found us. From his stools it was determined the he had recently eaten some skunk .<\/p>\n
We also have two young shepherd mix dogs named Sammy and Snoopy. They are about two years old now. Sammy is about 70 lbs and Snoopy is tall and lanky and is about 80 lbs. Blue is not out much, so Snoopy has been the dog in charge in the 5 acres that we fenced around the house to keep our dogs in and other dogs and people out.<\/p>\n
We picked up Thor on Christmas day. Thor had been cooped up, so when he did get out he was like a cyclone. After we let him out of the car he ran to say hi to Snoopy and Sammy and they took off running away like some Norse god of thunder had arrived. When they finally realized that they could not escape him they cowered before him shaking like a leaf asking for mercy.\u00a0 It took a day or two for Snoopy to adjust and act like a dog again and it took until today for Sammy. They now run together like good friends, of course the pecking order is obvious.<\/p>\n
Blue and Tuffy are usually in the house. When we let them out to meet Thor he tried his magic on them but they were not buying. Tuffy lives up to his name. He will not take crap from anyone no matter how big. He kept Thor out of his personal space with growls and snapping lunges. Of course Thor’s reactions were much to fast for Tuffy to actually bite him. He seemed to be laughing at Tuffy which just made Tuffy madder and madder. Finally I brought Tuffy in; I did not want him to have a stroke or something.<\/p>\n
Tuffy has always been a real character. When the mail man comes by the gate he will run over there and try to bite through the wire fence to get at him. The mailman says it hurts his own teeth to watch him do that. Tuffy does not like noisy trucks. He will actually bite the back tires of a propane truck. You have to make friends with Tuffy with a pat on the head before he will let you in. You ignore Tuffy at your own peril.<\/p>\n
Blue is fairly mild-mannered but after my big dog Bubba died he was in charge until he went blind. Now he usually just gives animals that get in his way a pass but Thor stayed in his face and kept bumping him with his body. Blue got annoyed and made some snapping lunges at Thor really meaning business.\u00a0 Blue is slow-moving because he cannot see so Thor thought that was great fun until Blue got hold of him once. Thor bit him back and they now have mutual respect for each other. Blue will not bite so quickly and Thor will get out of his way.<\/p>\n
The first two days that I had Thor I was really wondering about the wisdom of bringing an almost full grown monster like Thor into our little animal circus. For the first two days Thor was into everything and was a real pain in the butt. However, it was amazing how fast things changed in the following two days. I told my wife that Thor seems to have been incarnated with the spirit of my old dog Bubba.<\/p>\n
Bubba looked mean but he was a gentle giant; he clearly was in charge but he did not lord over the other animals. On the other hand, He would take on any wild animal that ventured in.<\/p>\n
Yesterday I was watching Thor with Panda, the 9 week old puppy. He would roll over and let the puppy walk all over him and Thor would even mouth him and let the pup bite his tongue. Bubba was exactly the same way with our small late dog Sparky. You would fear that the dog would chomp him and it would be all over, but they were best of friends until they both went on to the happy hunting grounds last year.<\/p>\n
Thor now is even tolerated by Blue and Tuffy. There are no confrontations like there were on the first day.<\/p>\n
The last couple of days I also have been physically wrestling with Thor myself and he loves it.\u00a0 Let me tell you that dog is very powerful but he will mostly hit you with his body and paws rather than use his mouth. Bubba used to do that also. If Thor uses His mouth he never uses any pressure he just\u00a0 mouths you but never bites. Bubba did that also. It is amazing how much Thor’s mannerisms are like Bubba’s. Both dogs would never just throw the wrestling match, they would not make it easy for you to pin them down and roll them over, but when they did lose you can see by the smile on their faces that were having a great time.<\/p>\n
We also have six cats. Thor was chasing them the first two days and they were in a panic. Most of our cats like dogs so lately a couple of the cats decided that they had enough of this new dog and cat routine. They stopped running and Thor did not pounce on them.\u00a0 Our cat Snowball laid on a chair on the porch all night and just ignored Thor’s relentless curiosity.<\/p>\n
A friend has a female German Shepard in heat that just found out that we got a big male. The dogs mated today. The stud fee is a puppy, so it looks like next spring I will also have the son of Thor or maybe the daughter of Thor.<\/p>\n
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