We have adopted another Rottweiler. His name is Axl.

Last July I received an email from a friend named Carey telling me about a 7 year old male Rottweiler named Axl that needed a home. This dog had been a service dog living with a handicapped woman in Akron, Ohio who's house burned down a few weeks earlier. The woman was placed in a home where she could no longer take this dog with her. The friend who sent me the email use to be a Rottweiler breeder and we met when we belonged to the same Rottweiler club. Carey had purchased Axl almost 8 years ago but later she sold the dog to the handicapped woman who trained him to become a service dog.

I informed Carey that I have a large home with a big piece of property and would love to adopt Axl. My request was approved and we arranged to meet at her home in Dayton, Ohio to make the pickup. The woman who worked for the rescue group drove Axl down from Akron and when she arrived it was the first time Carey had seen Axl in almost 7 years. The meeting was a joyous event and after awhile we drove back home to Kentucky with the newest member of our family.

Click the pictures to see a larger view.

Axl says goodby to his rescue mom while my wife and Carey look on.

Axl arrives at his new home.

Ruff and Axl explore part of the back yard inside the fence.

In the 14 years I have owned Rottweilers I have never before met one with the degree of gentleness of Axl. He is so sweet and lovable while at the same time so calm and easy going that we started calling him Dreamy. Axl very quickly attached himself to my wife Jackie and most likely he saw something familiar with the elderly woman he had lived with for 7 years. Axl follows my wife around like a shadow and when she sits on the couch to watch television he lays next to her with his big head in her lap. All the while when I sit on the opposite couch I get to look at the Dreamy expression on his face and his half-opened eyes, it is so peaceful.

Axl has only been in his new home for five months now but he acts like he has lived here all his life. At first Axl became my wife's dog almost exclusively because he was not used to living in a house with a man but now he and I are also best friends.

Axl brought another unexpected benefit to our home. He has become a constant playmate and companion to our other male Ruff. Ruff never had anyone to run around and play with before. Sassy had both ACL's torn when she was young and even after extensive surgery she does not do much running or playing.  I am still amazed at the physical condition Axl is in in spite of the fact he turned 8 years old in October. Axl runs like a Greyhound. When he is out playing with Ruff they start running in huge 100 foot circles around the trees and Ruff has never been able to catch up to Axl.

Axl is living a pampered life and he deserves every moment of it.

-0-

Ruff grows up to become the world's most handsome Rottweiler.

I am biased towards Rottweilers. I am sorry if you happen to like or own other breeds of dogs. I have owned other dogs but nothing compares with their sense of nobility or stature or devotion or strength of character or intelligence or loyalty than a Rottweiler. When I got my first Rottweiler I learned an expression from some other die-hard Rottie fans: There are only two breeds of dogs, Rottweilers and Notweilers.

That's enough. Now let me tell you about the world's most handsome Rottweiler. His name is Ruff.

If one picture is worth a thousand words then what follows is worth an entire book.

Can you guess what Ruff is doing?

Watching television from his favorite chair.

-0-

Ruff's adventures.

At the age of 1 1/2 Ruff weighed almost 90 lbs. By this time he gotten so used to strangers telling him how handsome or gorgeous he was he must have thought those were his other names. Here is a picture my wife Jackie took in July 2007. I was just able to still pick him up at that time.

Click the pictures to see a larger view.

In October 2008 we took him back for a visit to see his father in Burlington, Kentucky. Ruff was almost 100 lbs and when he met Kentucky Colonel, Ruff looked just like his father. Kentucky Colonel is owned by Cliff Haffer who also breeds Rottweilers on his horse farm. Cliff owns five Rottweilers and three horses.

Ruff had another surprise that day. We spotted Cliff's three horses out in the field and I asked if it was all right to take Ruff out to meet them. The horses were familiar with the Rottweilers Cliff owned so I didn't think there was any danger to letting Ruff get up close to them. Here is a sequence of photos of that moment.

I don't know if Ruff was able to tell how big the horses were because he never saw one before but as soon as one of the horses started walking towards us Ruff leaped back. Then the horse stopped and Ruff started staring at him.

Then the horse lowered his head and shook it back and forth. I have seen my Rottweilers do this same thing when they are in a playful mood so I am guessing Ruff recognized this as a friendly gesture. Then the horse walked slowly toward Ruff and got closer and closer.

Ruff and the horse were now nose to nose. I could tell when Ruff looked up how amazed he was at the size of this animal. Ruff has never seen anything this big before let alone get this close to one.Then the horse notice me taking the pictures and started to walk over to me when Ruff ran around and got up very close to the horse's face.

 

Then they touched their noses together and I saw a truly amazing sight.

Ruff kissed the horse.

Then our brave but foolish young Rottweiler did what he he does to every animal he meets. He went around and checked out the rear end of the horse. Cliff, the owner told me if the horse hadn't been use to Rottweilers he would have instinctively kicked back with his hind legs and force would have ended Ruff's curiosity.

From that day on Ruff has shown a special reaction every time he sees a horse. If the horse is on television Ruff walks up to the screen and sometimes touches his nose to it, especially if the horse looks like the one he met in the field that day. The one that he kissed.

All photographs contained in Living With Rottweilers are copyrighted by Nelson Abdullah and may not used for any commercial purpose.

Mocha goes to the bridge. The last of The Three Bears is gone.

 

In looking back at the saddest day of my life, I must admit I prolonged the inevitable too long and caused my girl Mo unnecessary suffering. Sometimes, I think, you can love someone so much it makes it impossible to part with them. I wonder how many others have felt the same way. We always boasted how healthy and long lived our Rottweilers were. Apart from Felony's tragic sudden death, Nikko Bear lived to be 12, which is 2 years beyond their life expectancy. We used to think it was because of the pampered, stress-free life we gave them that allowed them to live so long. Mo passed her 12th birthday in good health. Her only problem seemed to be a slight limp which was a leftover from a miraculous recovery from a stroke three years before. We though that Mo had suffered the same problem as her father Nikko when he had a ruptured disk in his spine but after an extensive exam that was ruled out. In the Fall of 2005 Mo began to have trouble standing by herself. By Christmas she became lame in her hind legs and was unable to stand without a belly band to lift her up. She also had trouble holding food in her mouth and her voice sounded slurred. By her voice I mean her day to day conversation words, the moans, grunts and low barks, they sounded different. Then on New Year's Eve I saw Dick Clark on television and he had been recovering from a recent stroke and I listened to his slurred speech and I knew for sure that Mo had suffered the same thing. 

We gave Mo our own physical therapy spending hours moving her hind legs and massaging her thigh muscles and within three months Mo had worked her way back to almost her normal self. She was able to stand and walk without assistance and she got her normal voice again. She just had that slight limp and the Vet said it was a miracle she was alive at all. I think that love is a powerful vitamin and Mo knew she was loved and she got the strength to fight her way through her problem.

The next two years were almost a normal existence for us. Mo got her excercise in the back yard and Sassy became closer to her and acted almost like a nursemaid. Then in the Spring of 2008 following a nail trim, Mo got an infected toe and it had to be amputated. This seemed to be too much for her to bear and she became withdrawn. She wouldn't eat or exercise and she had a hard time just going out to pee. Finally, two weeks before her 13th birthday I realized I had allowed her to suffer for no reason and I picked her up and brought her to the Vet to put her to sleep. 

I blame my own ego for Mo's suffering. I was so proud of how old she had become it was like boasting of a record. I have gone into great detail with this in hopes that anyone who reads this and loves their dog as much as I did would not let them suffer needlessly. When their time has come do the right thing and let them die with dignity.

I look back at my 12 years with Mo and have fond memories of our relationship. We were so in tuned with each other it was like we communicated by thought waves. She had a remarkable vocabulary of understanding human words and she was such a wonderful companion.

Let me show you some pictures of her.

 Click the pictures to see a larger view.

This is Mo and Neek in laying in the bathtub. We used to say this place was their Fortress of Solitude.

Goofy Mo would let you do anything to her and never complain. Here she wears a babushka made from a shoe box paper.

Mo was curious about a cat that had come to visit us. She was checking it out through the glass table top.

The first time I saw Mo laying on the couch on her back I called her a Porno Puppy. It turned out to be her favorite way to take a nap.

When Mo was awake, she was quite a pretty Rottweiler.

Here is young Sassy, Mo and her father Nikko. They were all very close to each other.

 Among her unofficial duties, Mo was my sock warmer. She took every thing I gave her and turned it into a smile.

Mocha was buried next to her mother and father in the Highland Pet Cemetery in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky.

I am forever grateful to have been able to spend so many years living with this wonderful, loving canine.

-0-

Here is Ruff, our new baby Rottweiler.

Twelve years after getting our first Rottweiler we decided it was time to add another to our family. Nikko, Felony and Mocha, while pure bred Rottweilers, were also obtained without registration papers and with the exception of Mocha, were rescued. Sassy was also a rescued Rott and had no pedigree. So I began to look for a breeder and found a woman in Ohio who happened to belong to the Greater Cincinnati Rottweiler Club that I briefly was a member in 2004. We went to see her latest litter of pups and instantly fell in love with a little fur ball who just happened to take a liking to me when i first picked him up and bought him on the spot. When he was 7 weeks old we brought him home and named him Ruffin von Howardhoffer but started calling him Ruff right away. It was a few years later that I learned that "Ruff" was the name of the dog of the cartoon character Dennis The Menace. 

It also became clear that I was going to need a new digital camera because I was about to start taking a whole lot of pictures. Ruff was a little doll and he was the most photogenic of all my Rottweilers. It didn't take long for Ruff to get used to having his picture taken and I often got the feeling he was a real ham about posing.

We were interested in learning about both of Ruff's parents. His mother lived at the home of Theresa Howard, the breeder, in Ohio, and his father was living on a horse farm in Burlington, Kentucky so we drove out to meet him in December 2006, a month before we brought baby Ruff home. Ruff's father is Kentucky Colonel and he is a really big Rottweiler. He weights 165 lbs and is a gentle and lovable as any dog I have ever met. We took Sassy and Mocha with us and here is a picture of the three of them. It isn't hard to spot Kentucky Colonel, he is almost twice as big as Sassy.

We knew right away that Little Ruff was going to be a big boy when he grew up. See what he looked like on his 1st birthday.

Ruff became an instant celebrity wherever he went. The best way to get a Rottweiler used to people is to socialize them and from the day we brought him home we would wrap him in a baby blanket and take him into stores. The appearance of a baby Rottweiler in a baby blanket being pushed around in a shopping cart attracts attention. People would stop and talk to us about him but mostly little Ruff was attracting women and girls. They would coo and giggle and pet him and shower him with kisses sometimes and Ruff was enjoying ever minute of it.

Back home Ruff was the new baby in the house and he had two females who both wanted to be his mother. Sassy and Mo each helped raise him. Mo taught him discipline and Sassy was his playmate and sometimes acted like his girlfriend. I don't know if my observation is correct but one of their favorite activities appeared to be tongue kissing but someone told me it was also a dominance thing, too. You be the judge. This is all about the lighter side of living with Rottweilers so look at it that way. 

Then, like all good things, someone had to put a stop to it.

Ruff was quickly learning that the girls were in charge. Did I just say quickly? I think Ruff was having some fun with this. Seems like he was challenging their authority.

I have already mentioned Ruff's fondness for kissing and two of his favorite people were our good friends Bev and Rich who also owned Rottweilers. Every time they come over for a visit Ruff treats them like long lost buddies. It is a good thing they enjoy seeing Ruff as much as he enjoys seeing them and they don't mind his kisses at all.

Matter of fact, seems none of the women Ruff got to meet ever objected to his kisses.

We took Ruff over to a local park one day where there was a fundraiser going on for the Dog Park and he got to get a bath from a few very willing girls who had volunteered. Judging by the smiles on their faces they seemed to enjoy Ruff as much as he enjoyed them rubbing their hands all over him with the shampoo.

It wasn't long after this that I started telling everyone about a secret idea I had; to take Ruff over to the local Hooters restaurant at shift change to see what the reaction would be in the parking lot. That is just a joke, folks, just a joke.

Ruff's adventures continue.

How goofy can a Rottweiler get?

    

We soon learned that when Rottweilers live in a home filled with love and are treated with kindness and affection, they tend to let out their inner personalities. Sort of like a person's libido getting unleashed when they get drunk. (no pun intended)  Rottweilers love to entertain their humans by just being themselves which can be quite goofy at times. I have collected a lot of pictures of these silly acts and here are a few of them.
 

Here is Sassy in a hat made out of the cut off sleeve from an old sweatshirt. She wears it with pride just like it was part of a uniform.

Click the pictures to see a larger view.

Here is Mocha wearing the same hat but Mo decides to add a goofy expression.

A little computer touch-up work with PhotoPaint and we have a funny picture to share with everyone.

This picture shows just how bad a little puppy can be sometimes.

And here we see humans and Rottweilers coexisting in the same house.

If you think these pictures are goofy just wait until you meet the next new member of our family. Ruff. That's him, below.