| 963 | August and His Brother |
2014-11-12 |
Our fall has been filled with a growing puppy. August is now four and a half months old and growing larger and wiser each day. He is not a perfect dog, but he is a fun one.
We have been attempting to raise Augie as a socialized and well adjusted pup. The process has actually been easy. The dog loves to meet almost all dogs - big and small, he believes they all want to play with him; and he believes humans - whether they like him or not, they should all be given the opportunity to pet him.
We did however find one dog that Augie just did not like. One evening I was walking Augie to a quite popular, local park. Many folks were out enjoying the fall weather. As we walked around a kid soccer practice, we spotted another Golden Retriever puppy. The puppy looked to be about the same size as our pup. Huh. After meeting the owner, I soon found out that the other pup was actually Augie's brother! I mean, from the same kennel, mom, dad, and litter! The brother was a bit bigger than Augie and seemed more powerful. However, the second after they met, Augie pulled away and just wanted to leave. I thought it was truly odd that Augie did not like his litter mate, but I did not press it.
At home I spoke to Amy about the meeting with Augie's brother. She listened but really thought I was exaggerating a bit. She still believed that Augie wanted to play with everyone. I agreed, but I had seen the non-exaggerated truth.
A couple of weeks later, Amy walked Augie to the park. Sure enough the same puppy was there. She talked to the owner for a few minutes as they shared puppy raising stories. Meanwhile, Augie was doing his best to escape. He really did not like his brother.
We talked about the meetings and compared notes. We thought it was great that Augie met one of his brothers and reasoned that he would really want to play with him, probably more than any other dog, but that was not the case.
Other dogs that Augie had met were mostly adults. At each encounter, Augie would roll over, sniff, and then they would play. Well, the brother was also a puppy and neither of the pups was rolling over for the other. The sibling was bigger and stronger than Augie and our pup just didn't want to play by those rules. I can't blame him! The litter mate was a little bruiser.
Not being a dog, we had trouble deciding, why Augie did not like his brother. We had thought it would have been fun for August to have play days with his brother, but his actions told us differently. They were probably both really good dogs, Augie just did not like him.
Happy Augie and His Brother's trails