Our dog story begins in January 2006, when we got Molly, a blue healer mix puppy. Molly was great, but she was an I’m-the-only-dog-you-need kind of dog; she was not happy when, three years later, we adopted Daisy, a Parson Russell terrier.
Even though Daisy was nearly a year old when we got her, she was full-on puppy, and she never, ever, let Molly forget it. All Daisy wanted to do was play. And Molly never understood the difference between playing and fighting. Sometimes they would play-fight together, but often their playing would turn into all-out bloody dogfights. In Molly’s later years, they formed sort of an uneasy coexistence, but they never became what I would call friends before Molly’s time in this world ran out in August 2020.
For the next nine months, then, Daisy was the only dog in the house, a role she adapted to with ease. She was, by then, almost 12 years old, and seemingly content to be the old, sole dog, getting all of our attention without having to work for it.
But in June 2021, we decided it was time she had a playmate. We looked around online and found a bunch of eligible puppies at the Humane Society of Missouri—which is where we had also found Daisy all those years ago. On June 9, we went there and instantly fell in love with the first puppy they showed us, a kinky-tailed golden retriever mix named “Gunter.” Well, the puppy was coming home with us, but not the name.
By the time we got home from the Humane Society, his name was Sam.
(Although I often call him “Sammit,” because that rhymes with what I really want to say when he’s making mischief, which is a pretty much of the time, although admittedly not as much as Daisy at the same age.)
Sam weighed about 17 pounds when we got him at about three months old. The Humane Society and our vet estimated he’d wind up about 50 pounds, and they were exactly right; he reached that weight and held steady. He has a muscle-to-fat ratio of 100-0.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Daisy, at first, was suspect. Perhaps she remembered being the New Puppy herself, and she probably questioned whether we NEEDED another dog in the house. But Sam soon learned to challenge her, and Daisy learned to challenge him back, and a new era of tail-wagging play-fighting had begun.
In general, they got along a lot better, from the outset, than Daisy and Molly ever did. Maybe it had something to do with gender; the word we were getting is that two dogs of the same sex will always feel like rivals, while different genders will have fewer issues. Whatever, when they weren’t playing hard, they would settle down together, and within a week they would lie down actually touching each other, something that never happened in the Molly-Daisy days.
Daisy weighed about 30 pounds when we got Sam, and he was 17 pounds. The fights in those early days were pretty even, with neither dog really gaining much advantage. Sam developed some interesting tactics, like pulling Daisy off the couch by grabbing onto her collar—or loose neck skin—but she, more experienced, generally found ways to parry his attacks.
Now, of course, he’s reached 50 pounds, while she’s still at 30, and the fights would be no contest if he wanted. He has definitely reached alpha status, by virtue of his size, but that hasn’t stopped her from launching into mock battles when provoked. Generally, the way it works is that Sam will torment her for a while until one of us grabs his collar to stop him and hold him back, and then, while he’s restrained, she’ll lunge at him. She’s no fool.
She’ll gladly accept the challenge of a tug-of-war using any of a variety of rope toys we have around the house, but if they’re on the hardwood floors Sam will drag her backward through the room. On carpet, though, she holds her own.
Daisy’s 14 years old now. Gray hairs have replaced some of the black hairs on her face. Jumping onto the couch has become a 50-50 proposition for her now; sometimes she makes it, sometimes she has to make several attempts. She’s starting to get mysterious lumps and swellings in various places on her body. But she’s still up for some rough-and-tumble. It’s as if, by bringing a puppy into the house, we reawakened the puppyness in her as well.
