Hi all!

So sorry that I haven’t been blogging too much lately.  Raising a tiny puppy (who isn’t so tiny anymore) is really a job!  I can’t imagine doing this and working, too!  It’s a lot of work!

Right now, we’re having dog fights…not too bad, but Codiak gave Casey a bloody nose a couple of days ago.  I can’t really tell which one is the dominate guy, but it just seems to me that Codiak is going to be 6 times the size of Casey and we can’t imagine Casey being the dominate dog.  He’s usually not.  When we took Codiak out a few nights ago, he was most certainly the submissive one, so now I’m really confused.

Everything I’ve read says that you’re supposed to feed the dominate dog first and then the Beta dog, give the dominate dog the attention first and so on…the problem is, I don’t know which one is going to be the dominate one.  Some people say since Casey’s older, he should get that role, but other people, like me think that Codiak’s going to be much larger, so he gets that role.  Right now, the fights are 50/50.  There are battles that Casey clearly wins and others that Codiak is the champ.  I kind of feel bad for Casey though, since he’s been with us a lot longer.

Right now, I’m feeding both of the dogs in the same room, at the same time–because I don’t know which one to feed first.  I haven’t been giving attention to either one of them first.  It’s just whoever comes to me first, for right now.  I know that I can’t treat the dogs as equals because they aren’t…but it isn’t clear to me who is going to come out on top.  Codi is only 11, nearly 12 weeks old, yet he is bigger in all ways now.  He’s about 25 pounds (yes, he’s going to be a big boy!) and is taller and longer than Casey is. 

Casey’s a little underweight, but not too badly.  On a scale of 1-7, 1 being emaciated, 7 being morbidly obese, Casey is between a 3 and a 4, with 5 being the optimal.  For a Cavalier, he should be closer to 20 pounds, but he’s got a small frame and the vet said that if we could get his weight up to 15-16 pounds that would be a good weight for him.  When he had his surgery, he was 13 pounds.  When he had his UTI a couple of months ago, his weight went up to 14.5 pounds, which I am not complaining…but you should hear everyone else when they meet him.  They all think he’s too thin.  You can feel his ribs, but you can’t see them.  There’s no fat on this dog at all–it’s all lean muscle!

So, anyway, back to my dilemma!  I don’t know what I am going to do about these guys.  Codiak hasn’t learned not to jump up on things and so now, he’s getting time outs whenever he does it.  I feel bad doing it, but that the only way that he’s going to learn, I think.  We don’t want him jumping on things.  He’s already HUGE!

I know that we haven’t even started in on the destructive phase yet, but I’d like to nip it in the bud now before it gets out of hand and before he’s too big!  We didn’t really have that sort of phase with Casey.  Actually, jumping up on the table was something that he didn’t really do, but does now, to a certain degree because we let him stay with a friend of ours months ago and they allowed their dog to jump up and get food and I’m sure that they allowed Casey to do the same thing.  Anyway, it’s neither here nor there at this point.  We don’t allow our dogs on the table and we NEVER feed either of them people food.

On a side note, Rob spent a good portion of the day looking at domestic adoptions.  I think he may have reconsidered his position on this.  I don’t have any more information about this and to be honest–I’ve come to terms with “just” being a fur-mommy!  There are some advantages to that! 

Well, thanks for stopping by and reading.  I need to get going, but I want to wish you a very nice day!!!