We are pet sitting my sister’s schnauzer while she and her family are vacationing in Florida. I love Stoney, our yellow lab, but I admit that I don’t know much about other breeds of dogs.
The first lesson that I learned about dog sitting is that you should always ask the question, “For how long?” Ya know, I had no idea when I agreed to watching Max that my sister would be gone for ten days. I’m sure I still would have said yes (I love my sister after all) but ten days? The first night Max had trouble sleeping. His crying woke me up at 3am. Goodness. If I wanted to be awake at 3am then I would have another baby.
Here are some observations about Max. Max loves Stoney (if you know what I mean) and Stoney tolerates Max. It’s payback time for Stoney who loves middle school girls. Stoney displays a lot of patience for Max considering his tiny shadow is forever sniffing his behind.
Max is a big baby. I’ve never met a dog afraid to climb up and down stairs. He has to be carried in and out of the house. Except for the one time that Max flew down five steps at a time trying to catch Lovely the cat. It happened so fast that we were all scratching our heads wondering, “did you just see what I saw?” The stair issue is an advantage to Lovely and Stoney. Lovely has spent the last three days hiding in the basement. Not to mention that Lovely is already feeling needy. Her brother, Explorer, is still missing. Stoney has learned that he can escape from Max by hanging out in Adam’s upstairs office. Unfortunately I have to listen to Max cry when his dog pal disappears.
Megan has mostly ignored Max except for taking him for a walk last night. It was an exciting adventure for Megan. I don’t let her hold Stoney’s leash on walks because I’m afraid that Stoney will knock her over. He has a tendency to get excited and lose his manners. Max is a more manageable size.
Paul tried to be Max’s friend and he was rewarded with a bite to his arm. It’s not that Max doesn’t have exposure to children. My sister has four of them. I don’t know the full story of what happened because I wasn’t there and anytime that Paul is injured he refuses to talk about it.
Despite these issues Max hasn’t been too bad having around. I’m sure we will all get into a groove right in time for Max to go home.
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Peanut is afraid to go up & down our basement stairs. He will go up and down the two steps to the landing, to go outside but would rather have us pick him up and take him down those steps also. I keep telling Peanut that if a tornado comes I’m not looking for him to carry him down the stairs, he’s on his own.
Update: As of today Max CAN climb stairs. Evidently Stoney is a good teacher of all sorts of useful skills. Let’s hope Max wasn’t paying attention when Stoney was digging holes in the back yard.
We had a Schnauzer growing up … she was the best dog EVER.
The thing about schnauzers that may help you: they think they are part of the family and will listen and protect you… so I think you’re right -
Max will get adjusted to you all and then really start feeling like a part of the family-
and then be returned to his own
ps on the dob bite- schnauzers aren’t aggressive BUT they think they are big dogs… they are ‘tough guys’ –and I learned that it’s easy to start playing with them like they are small dogs, picking them up all the time, etc. (not that Paul did that) and that’s when they get sick of it and will- once in a while- snap at you to stop.