Belle and Jolie

Belle and Jolie arrived yesterday so I don't know them all that well yet, but they are nice little dogs and live together as sisters. Belle is 13.5 years old, very sweet, and sleeps a lot. We call her Oma. The other dogs seem to realize that she is very old and have automatic respect for her. They basically just leave her alone, though Boudreaux being our teenager of the moment does try to get a whiff every now and then. Belle is tolerant and mostly just minds her own business.

Jolie is younger and is following me everywhere. She had a bit of trouble calming down for bed last night, but there is a lot of activity here at the moment, and just a lot of dogs. Everyone went to sleep except Jolie and I heard her little nails clicking on the wooden floors until very late. She went with the boys for a walk last night, and was THRILLED to be allowed off the leash, and stayed perfectly with Bernd. He took her again this morning on the big walk, and she got to the end of the street, turned around and wanted to come home. As we had snow last night, maybe she was not really getting into the weather.

They are doing fine here, and there is now only the occasional conflict between Jolie and Boudreaux. Thank goodness Boudreaux does not seem to have a mean bone in his body and does not really want to hurt her. She can be a bit testy with him, but I think she's just putting him in his place and he seems to be accepting her limits...until the next time he has to try!

Boudreaux

Boudreaux is a constant source of entertainment here. He's a really nice dude, 2 years old, and he loves playing with Uben. He watches me with that expression in the picture, and I think he tries really hard to be a good boy. He is however, all Lab, and being fairly young, he reminds me of the nice guy in 9th grade who will clearly join the football team. He's so enthusiastic around the other dogs (coming up in the next post) that the little one, Jolie who is also here, almost got lifted off the ground in his attempt to get a good whiff of her rear end. She got pretty mad at him and had to tell him repeatedly to back off. If he was the guy in high school, he would be trying to kiss all the girls.....he does not mean any harm, but he's got to get in there and give it a try. He took 2 unauthorized pees in the house and I thankfully caught him during the second one, read him the riot act and scared him so badly that he peed his way across the living room and out into the hall. We told him to knock it off and that he was on probation for the next few hours, and if he did it again I was going to have to call his parents. Thankfully the peeing stopped. He is terrific on walks in the fields and in the woods and stays with us at all times while still having some fun out there....he seemed to immediately grasp that we are his people of the moment and he stops and looks for us when he is out ahead, and never goes too far. I must say that the boy is a complete urination machine, and he and Uben are in constant competition in marking the world around here. All in all, Boudreaux is a terrific dog, we like him a lot, and it has been fun having this teenager around for a few days.

Enough said