Take care

Right now Casey and I call ourselves parents, but only to furry little things, no real people things. This past week our younger dog has started picking fights with our older dog who happens to be the first animal I ever owned by myself. I've had her since college and I will be the first to admit I probably did not treat her as a dog as much as I should have, so now she's 7 1/2 years old and kinda spoiled. She gets to sleep on the bed with me and both animals are allowed on the furniture as long as no people are occupying those spaces. It's never been a problem before, but last week Gremlin the younger one started picking major fights with Cinnamon my older one. At first we thought it was just over food but then she could not even be in his sight line and he would start growling and then attack. Granted Cinnamon outweighs him by about 20lbs and could totally take him, but that's not really what I want my dogs to be doing, especially when Casey and I start having little people. Well after an entire week of at least one fight a day and random growling all day long they finally seemed to be getting along. They hadn't had a fight that morning and were playing well together and with the neighbor kids. Should have known it was to good to be true, one minute they were playing chase with each other and going after the same ball next thing gremlin growls and lunges at cinnamon again. Only this time I couldn't get to him so I pulled her away and he was able to get to the soft under skin of her leg and when Casey pulled gremlin away it left cinnamon with a cut that required a visit to the vet. So, now hundreds of dollars later and a week of separation I'm reevaluating how I trained my dogs. Cinnamon is staying with my mom and gremlin is here and I'm working really hard with him to get him to listen and understand I'm the boss not him. I've also started running with him as well as going on walks with him multiple times a day. It's funny how most people get in shape for themselves, yet I might wind up getting in shape so that my dogs can get along for the rest of their lives. I know some people would choose to just give one dog away, I can't do that it would bother me to think what might happen, because it would be gremlin that would be given away. I've had cinnamon to long and right now gremlin is the instigator. So, now I just keep thinking what is he gonna do when we take him up to mom's and he has to play nice with cinnamon again. Hopefully all these extras walks and runs will run down some of his energy and he'll be nicer. We're also going to be looking into doggy obedience classes too.