Training a new babysitter. I think it comes in the DNA.

Good babysitters are hard to come by. Especially the nursemaid variety. I ought to know, I've gone through four of them in the last three years. Luckily, we have our three Rottweilers who are more than willing to take the job, but it always seems the female Rotts have a special talent for the work. I think you have seen the help I get tying my wife's shoes in the morning to see I have no trouble finding volunteers.

So it was yesterday afternoon. I spotted Bess doing something I hadn't seen her do before. She jumped onto the small couch next to Jacqueline's recliner and seemed to be in a particularly loving mood.

Bess can be a real sweetheart when she wants to as well as the Tomboy she enjoys being most of the time.

A few odds and ends.

 

Old business first.

Breakfast this morning was a repeat of yesterday. Ruff ate by himself early and Bess and Axl ate much later, side by side again. Yay! I love it when a plan comes together. Ditto at dinner time.

Me and my shadow.

Got up from the computer last night to go to bed and my not so little anymore shadow was curled up around the base of my chair. I guess it is as close to me as she can get without climbing in my lap.

I think I spoke too soon.

Its been a long time since I had a Rottweiler climb in my lap and give me kisses. Ruffin was very good at that when he was much younger. So I shouldn't have been surprised when Bess did the same thing this afternoon. I didn't have the camera set up the first time so after enjoying a few minutes of her frantic kisses I made her get down and got the camera and remote ready. Then all I said was Bess, gimme a kiss, and she was in my lap again. And I could tell she was enjoying this new game she had just invented. 

A strange observation at the feeding stand.

Bessie has been slowing getting over her eating disorder. And what I had once thought was a fear of her metal food bowl. OK, I've spent so much time observing the problem and trying to think of causes to eliminate that I've let my mind wander a bit. After all, there's nothing wrong with thinking outside the box. An hour ago I saw something that added a new wrinkle to the situation.

Our normal routine is that I get up first in the morning along with Bessie and Ruff, take them out to pee and then we have our breakfast together. Sort of, anyway. Ruff eats anything, any time, any place. Bess is more finicky. So Ruff has a bowl of dog food and Bess practically stays out of the kitchen until I open the jar of peanut butter for their pills and biscuits. Then Bess comes out and gets hers and always takes her big Milk Bone biscuit into the family room to eat it.

Awhile later its time to get the Mom out of bed and take Axl outside for his pee. Then Mom and Axl come out to the kitchen for breakfast. Since it takes longer to get my wife's breakfast I always set down a bowl of food for Axl first. Today I gave him a bowl of kibble with a handful of cheddar cheese sprinkled on top. When I set this down for him Bessie was also at the feeder so I made a second bowl of kibble and cheese and put it down for her. And Bessie and Axl ate their breakfast together standing side by side at the feeder.

Since the first day I brought Bess into her new home she has treated Axl differently that she treated Ruff. Axl earned the name Grandpa Axl because he acted more maturely to Bess than Ruff did. I had thought that Ruff was supposed to be teaching Bess discipline but he quickly became her playmate with all the daily playschool stuff that I was calling combat lessons. Meanwhile, Grandpa Axl remained aloof and acted more like a curmudgeon to the pesty little pup. The first time little Bess tried to jump on him to play like she does to Ruff, Axl swiped her with his huge head and flung her across the room. It was also the first time in six years I heard him growl.

Later on as Bess got bigger she warmed up to Axl and started flirting with him with ear licks and kisses. She was treating him with respect and he was responding to it. Many times I saw her laying very close to him, something that she never does with Ruff.

So the observation at the food dish this morning immediately told me that Bess prefers to eat along her Grandpa and does not like to eat with Ruffin. And tonight at dinner time I'm going to arrange it.

UPDATE: 7 PM same day.

Something old and something new. 

Well, dinner time arrived and I did what I had planned. My wife and I had a late supper so I fed Ruff about 6 o'clock which is close to his normal meal time. As mentioned, Axl doesn't come out to the kitchen until he follows his Mom so I held off putting down his and Bessie's dinner until we sat down to eat. Once again, just like at breakfast, Bessie stood next to Axl and they both ate from their bowls. Only difference was Axl finished his meal and then went to lay down next to my wife's chair at the table but Bessie walked away after only eating a little bit. Then I realized why. The humans still had food on the table. 

So after we finished our meal and Bessie got to help pre-wash the dinner plates and pick up a few scraps of leftovers, she then went back to her unfinished dinner and gobbled it up. I have seen this before. She treats her dog food as a backup meal and won't eat it until she is sure all of the people food is gone. (Actually, Bess only cleans my plate. Axl always cleans his Mom's plate.)

It amazes me what I've learned from watching them. Lets try this again in the morning.

 

On the care and feeding of Rottweilers, the eyes have it.

Sometimes I sit around trying to come up with an interesting topic to write about on Living With Rottweilers and then the idea pops into my head after reading someone’s comments. Like a nice lady from South Africa who wrote: 

Look at those tongues, lol. They would definitely be in contention for a Gold medal in Synchronised Licking in the doggie olympics… I love how a Rott tends to OPEN their eyes wide up when getting a treat, Both ours do it and it is hysterical… almost as if the wider their eyes the more peanut butter there is.

Her comment about the look in their eyes reminded me of my first Rottweilers almost 20 years ago. I used to call them my Three Bears and in fact that’s what they were named: Mocha Bear was my first Rottie girl who I got as a puppy, at first I called her just Mocha until we adopted her parents, Nikko Bear and Felony Bear. Here are Felony Bear, Mocha Bear and Nikko Bear in 2001.

As a funny side note, those are the actual names that I had engraved on their tombstones in the Highland Pet Cemetery. They are buried side by side.

The people who run the pet cemetery told me that another client had asked them in a rather concerned voice if there were real bears buried there. Why that would matter to anyone in a cemetery is beyond me. I did explain that among Rottweiler owners, Bear is a fairly common name.

Anyway, back to the care and feeding of Rottweilers. Felony, who I always called Felly Girl, always had the special “look” and it was that look in her eyes that literally changed my mind and made me decide to keep them and give them a forever home after my wife drove back to Long Island to get them from my daughter (but that’s another story).

The three bears always loved to share everything the two humans had and one of their favorite treats was pizza. 

Here’s the sequence of photos I took. Mocha first. The girls always go before the boys, don't they?

And then when my wife offered Felly Girl a slice I saw the Pizza Eyes look on her face. By the way, her official name on her AKC Pedigree registration is Erin Lee's Felony but since we were the third or fourth home she lived in we had no other details.

With Nikko Bear patiently waiting his turn in the background.

Not much has changed from one Rottweiler to another. Once again here is the look that seems inspired from Walt Disney's classic film Lady and the Tramp.

No tramps here in our house. 

 

Hijinks in the kitchen

Never a dull moment during the breakfast hour at our house. The Mom's been fed, the Rottweilers been fed and then its time for the peanut butter pills and big biscuit ceremony. A friend who owns Rottweilers asked me one time if I had trouble giving medicine to my dogs. I asked him back if he ever tried sticking the pills in a spoon of peanut butter and he said, no. Now he says he could never get by without a jar on the kitchen table. We've been doing it forever, at least since the early days when we first had Rottweilers. Peanut butter is irresistible. Every morning we give a spoonful with their Brewer's Yeast pills and any other medicine they may be getting at the time. And its all followed with a large Milk Bone dog biscuit.

As soon as Mom had her breakfast and the table was cleared, Bess and Ruff had gotten so excited knowing what was coming next that they decided to have some play-time.

Then after the last spoonful of peanut butter was used to dispense the pills I found the jar empty. So I got out the spatula to scrap the sides and bottom and give it to the dogs. As soon as they saw me take the spatula from the drawer they seemed to know what was coming next and they got excited all over again. Even old man Axl got up from his place under the table by his Mom's side to join in.

And this last photo is some sort of record. It's the first time I saw a triple header and recorded it with the camera at the same time.

Just one more photo that I forgot to post. Reminds me of the iconic scene from the Walt Disney movie Lady and the Tramp.

 

Happy Birthday, baby Bess, you are 1 year old today.

Today was the day for another birthday party. Baby Bess is no longer a baby any more, she is now a young lady Rottweiler, all of one year old. Carrying on a tradition for special occasions at our house Bess enjoyed a special dinner with a filet mignon steak, the best that a special little girl could eat. The humans had the same and also had some birthday cake. A very special guest, the wonderful lady who made it possible for me to adopt Bess, brought over some doggie ice cream, something I never heard of before. From the looks of things Bess wasn't sure what had been placed in front of her but a few quick sniffs and licks and she decided this was as good as any other people food she has enjoyed.

Update to post July 3, 2015

Had an email exchange this morning about these birthday parties and decided to dig way back into my photo collection to find some pictures that explained how this all began. These pictures were taken about 18 years ago with a 35mm camera and the prints were scanned into my computer.

A long time ago, in what seems now to be another age, my wife Jacqueline used to bake a small meat loaf birthday cake for the Rottweilers and cover it with mash potato “icing”. The first picture is from  Nikko Bear's 5th birthday, minus the icing, in 1997. We kept that tradition going for many years until a mail-order steak company accidentally sent us a shipment of frozen filet mignon that got defrosted before it arrived. While still cold the meat couldn’t be refrozen so the steak company replaced the order and that was the first day our Rotts tasted this special treat. 

And three special Rottweilers are about to savor their first filet mignon dinner.

Skip forward to one year ago and we had the combined birthday parties for 8-year old Ruffin and 13-year old Axl and I cooked up a filet for them to share. Now I am blessed with a special little Rottie girl that us three boys all helped to raise and I felt she deserved the best birthday dinner ever. And not to be outdone, two months from now, God willing, Grandpa Axl will be having a 14th birthday party sharing another steak with his buddy Ruff who will be 9-years old.