Deuce

Poor Deuce. Anni hogs everything. When I take Anni on walks, people stop (even those driving by in their cars) to tell me how cute she is. This just doesn't happen with Deuce. You know what? He is just as adorable. I mean look at that face.

Deuce is a pretty laid back dude. His energy level is much, much lower than Anni's. They both get excited to see me and any other human that approaches, but Deuce usually shows his excitement while sitting down. His tail wags and his eyes light up. Anni just cannot sit still. She wiggles. It's mostly her back end that wiggles, but she is moving sideways, forwards and backwards the whole time. It is hilarious every time I see it. And she always has to include Deuce by backing up into him. He sits there as her tail whacks him in the face. When anyone comes close to them, though, they both jump up in a frenzy.

Deuce learns things faster than Anni. Maybe it's because he is calm enough to digest it. After I had them for a couple of days, I began teaching "sit". I worked with them both individually. Deuce had it that day. Anni just would not focus. She picked it up within the next couple of days by following Deuce's lead. It wasn't clear to me at that point who was top dog. Deuce was also the first one to learn "drop it." The funny thing is that I didn't teach it to him. I would say "drop it" when he would pick up something on our walks, but I didn't do any real training. I had been using "give" as a command for them to release things, but it wasn't effective. I was amazed when he actually dropped something for the first time. Anni has gotten this down too, except that sometimes she immediately picks back up what she has dropped. Both pups can be sneaky sometimes by dropping some of what they pick up and keeping the rest. Those little devils.

You may be curious as to what they grab. Here are the most common things: sticks, pine cones, leaves, and newspapers. It is not the freshly delivered papers that are still rolled up nicely in their plastic sleeves that interrupt our walks, but papers that people fail to pick up. Although for some reason the plastic is gone. These papers have been driven over, rained on and who knows what else. The dogs love them. I wish people would pick up their darn papers!

Deuce can be a real stubborn ass. He wants to move when he wants to move. You say "let's go" and give a little tug on the leash and Anni is with you. I'm scared I'm going to choke Deuce, because he plants his feet into the ground and no matter how hard I pull he doesn't budge. He just looks up at me defiantly from under the wrinkles caused by the collar moving up the back of his head. Most of the time he is rooting around like a pig when his resists. When I take them out to "go potty", the three of us hurriedly move from the garage to the front lawn. Anni goes right into the grass and pees, but Deuce comes to a halt right before leaving the pavement. Then he slowly steps onto the grass and does his business. When we take walks he is bad about walking ahead of me and pulling the leash. I've been working with both pups from the beginning to curb this behavior, but Deuce has regressed. If I tighten the slack of the leash and hold him close to my side, he just pulls sideways. I watched his sideways pull while my husband was walking him, and the scene looked like a V-8 commercial.

Deuce has another quirk (bad habit) that I fortunately do not have to deal with. When my neighbors come over to visit the pups, Deuce drops a little pee. When my husband touches him, he pees. Sometimes all Lee has to do is talk to him and he waterworks begin. And it's not just a little sprinkle here and there. With Lee it is often a steady stream. I can't figure out where he is keeping all of that pee. And, well, I do have to deal with it because I usually have to clean up the mess. At least I'm not the one getting peed on. I love Deuce. He is my stubborn little pee-pee head.

I must report that my walks with Deuce the last few days have been fabulous. For starters, he is actually walking some distance. He usually puts the brakes on pretty soon into our walk. He hasn't been pulling as much, picking up as much, and he continues to follow the "drop it" command. Good boy!