A Weekend Visitor

We had a visitor this weekend and his name is Wally!  

 Wally is a 12 week old mastiff puppy who is owned by friends of ours.  His owners had big plans this past weekend and needed to be away from the house for 14 hours both days.  Since he was a 12 week old puppy somebody needed to watch him and I volunteered.  Every time I see a socialization opportunity for my puppy I always jump on it and this seemed perfect.

Copley had a good time for 90% of the day.  Being 12 weeks old Wally is a little short on the dog social skills and constantly jumped right in Copley's face.  Luckily Copley is great with puppies and even though this puppy was  10lbs bigger than him, he still treated him with the patience he usually has for puppies that age.  They played and had a good time and Copley appropriately corrected Wally for his rude behavior when needed.  Wally learned a lot and by the end of the day was a little less in your face with Copley.  For the last three hours he was here Copley hid in his crate with his back to the door.

Kerrigan had a good time that evolved into an interesting time.  She initiated play with Wally a LOT.  They played one of Kerri's favorite games "bite the face" where they both bit each others face.  I was right there and extremely surprised that Wally was so gentle with her.  That was the good time.  The interesting time was when she wanted to play chase with him.  She would initiate a game of chase- play bowing and howling and just begging him to play.  Then when he actually did chase her she got scared of this big clumsy dog coming after her (I can't blame her for that) and would jump up on the couch to hide with her tail tucked between her legs.  I can understand this once- but she did it over and over again.  She was so excited to play that she forgot what the consequences were.  I did my best to stop her and encourage games that didn't involve running.  Overall things went pretty smooth.

I had a great idea to take a picture of them all sitting in a line next to each other for size comparison but it was a little tough.  The picture I got in the end was not half bad-

 

Kerri- 8 months 5.8lbs, Wally 3 months 35lbs and Copley 3 years 21lbs

They are not looking at the camera, Kerri isn't sitting and Copley is plopped down with his legs like all over the place but I am proud.  It is not blurry, they are all in it and you can see their faces.  Believe me it is an accomplishment.

Final verdict on the weekend: Wally is a very well behaved puppy and my dogs had a good time playing with a new friend.  Most importantly I had a great time hanging out with an adorable wrinkly 12 week old puppy for two days.