Casey Fits In

Monday night, after Jake & Casey had done some posturing, we went to bed. Tika as usual hogged my side of the bed while I brushed my teeth and all; Jake as usual settled into Tika's usual spot while Tika was busy homesteading my side of the bed. When I stuck my feet under the covers, usually Tika moves, then Jake moves, and the Natural Order is restored. However, this time as Tika stepped over Jake (his back was to her), he jumped up and attacked her.

I know that this is because he's on edge because of the new dog. He hasn't done that to her since the first month or two she was here (a year and a half ago) and she was doing big-puppy-annoying sorts of things in his face.

She didn't want to get back on the bed after that; kept going into the small closet near the bed instead. (Note that Tika's twice Jake's size and quite a brazen hussy, normally.) Sooooooo I got up, put on my bathrobe, went downstairs, let both dogs out; they charged out into the yard in their usual perimeter-clearing mode, and eventually came back in.

Then everything was set right, and we could go back upstairs as normal and go to bed as normal and no feelings were permanently hurt.

This morning, Tika continued to sneak into Casey's room and eat his food. His mom said, hmm, maybe Casey needs to learn to eat at a fixed time, so I said I'd feed him when I fed my dogs.

I warned her that dogs who are slow, picky eaters and who've been allowed to free feed sometimes won't eat for 2 or 3 times but then would eat when they got hungry enough.

For breakfast I gave my dogs their food; made Casey sit and wait for his food just like my dogs do. When I told him OK, he sniffed at it, walked around a little bit (not going too far), thought about it for about 30 seconds, and then carefully ate it all, one dainty morsel at a time. Surprised everyone except, probably, himself, who undoubtedly deliberately had us all going on what a delicate flower of doghood he was.