Sunshine (a.k.a Sunny)
We’ve finally added to our pack after about a year of thinking about it, much to the chagrin of Boots! [Mother has it right for once. – Boots] I had been wanting to get a young dog to play with Sammy, who seemed to be pretty bored and ran outside to bark a lot. Molly is 10 and just isn’t interested in being as active as Sammy. She’s actually healthier than when we first got her thanks to our alternative vet and our own efforts at providing a really clean, raw diet. But Molly is more of a chew-on-a-stick kind of dog and Sammy is more of a chase-and-kill-a-stick dog.
Well, we went to visit some friends and it turned out that their dog had a litter, and they were down to one pup who needed a home. We couldn’t resist! [Because Mother has no willpower! And of course nobody asked me about it. – Boots] As you can tell from the picture, Sunshine is a yellow lab (our third now, sheesh), and she’s almost 5 months old. I woke up the day after I got her and panicked, thinking “what have we done?!” I wasn’t really thinking about going through puppy training again, but it just seemed right to take her home.
It turns out she’s a great fit into our family. She has puppy energy but she’s a calm dog. She lays around with the other dogs or just lays quietly on her bed chewing on a bone. When we go outside she runs around with Sammy, then she’s content to lay in the woods and chew on a stick. We’ve had to train her from the ground up, starting with potty training, but we’ve only had two accidents in the house and she seems to have the idea down pat. She learned to use the dog door in about 10 minutes. The stairs were a challenge, but with some encouragement she’s doing just fine. She’s super smart and very sweet. She’s had to learn not to aggravate the cats [I got her good yesterday! – Boots] and it only took her a day to learn how to walk on a leash.
Sammy and Sunny, friends at last!
It took Sammy and Molly several days to warm up to her. Sammy was very territorial and didn’t want to have anything to do with her, but after about 4 days he suddenly decided it would be fun to chase her around the back yard, and now they are buds. They lay on the floor together and face-fight, and Sammy is showing her how to patrol the back yard like Charlie taught him. She follows him around, sniffing everything he sniffs and peeing in the same places. Molly doesn’t mind Sunshine now, unless the puppy steps on her while she and Sammy are horsing around…then you will hear the big dog growl. 
The Cesar Milan training we have done with the older dogs has proved invaluable. The three dogs are truly acting like a calm pack now, and I can even walk all three of them together by myself with no problems. We haven’t encountered another dog on a walk yet, however, so we’ll see how it goes. But I don’t think we’d be having such an easy time of it if we hadn’t already put Cesar’s principles into practice.
Sunshine is irresistibly cute and cuddly, and she makes us laugh. She and Sammy are a riot together! I’m sure Boots will get used to having another smelly beast in the house…eventually. [Don’t count on it Mother…]
