relationships are intriguing, most especially familial ones, and there’s nothing more fascinating to me than the connections in a family of dogs. in our house we seem to have a little bit of everything…love, like, acquaintances all with a little splash of adversarialism.
we've had speck since she was a puppy, 9 years, and she has literally played a sum total of about 10 minutes in her life, spaced out over the years in second increments. every week or so she’ll run a few feet and make a motion to herd someone but that’s the gamut of her physical activity and involvement with the pack. she’s a loner dottie…always close by but usually with at least some distance between her and everyone else. we've had countless dogs through the house who she couldn’t care less about...she's gets along with everyone and seemingly has no issues but there’s no one she’s writing home about.
and then along came juice and suddenly she’s like a teenage girl scrawling in her diary. she loves him…looooooves him. they play constantly, she seeks him out, she chases him and now we have a herd of flying pigs in our yard.
i don't know what to chalk it up to - maybe he’s the first one that tried or he’s the first one to actually speak specky. you don't ever really see the things that lead up to the first thing...dogs can be subtle* and they have their own language and we humans miss much of it. did juice court her, did she court him? unfortunately we’ll never know that answer but damn it if it isn't tickling to watch.
*they can also be very unsubtle, like the absolute most opposite of subtle you can imagine