All Muscle, No Brain
Last summer we walked out into the yard to find the most pitiful puppy. He was scrawny, severely underweight & flea-ridden. But when he slowly approached and looked at me with one blue eye and one brown eye in that adorably brindled face, I knew it was too late. That bobble-headed pittie had won me over.
We really were not in the market for a puppy. Our older dog, Sherlock, a chocolate lab, is a Diabetes Alert Service Dog and has been the only animal in the house for 8 years. She was not pleased to have this very demanding and energetic little beast sleeping in her bed, eating her food, drinking her water, and *gasp* chasing her tennis balls.
We decided to keep the pittie, Coulson, only until we could find him a good home. Our local shelter was full and since he was an “aggressive breed” we couldn’t bear the thought of him possibly being euthanized.
So we started to train him. He learned very quickly how to sit, come, down, nose, shake, fist bump, and roll over. What he didn’t learn was how strong he was or how to control his quickly growing body. When he got the zoomies -- look out -- you will be knocked over. Walking on a leash -- no way. In fact, he ate his harness off of his body. I really don’t know how he managed to twist himself around enough to get his mouth onto it.
All the time we trained him and worked on the two dogs getting along. I walked in one day and found them both asleep on the dog bed, rear ends touching. Success!!
Sherlock tried to teach Coulson to throw the tennis ball. She threw it to him. He ran off with it. She looked at me like “Mom, please ditch this beast and let me get back to my normal diva life.”
Coulson got so strong and fast that he would run through the house to catch a toy, miss, and smack into the wall. If I was on the bed and he wanted up, he would run full force, launch himself from half-way across the room, fail to clear the footboard, and . . . Puppy Regret. I never in my life thought that I would have to hold an ice pack on my dog’s privates. When he stopped in the middle of one of his regular attacks of the zoomies, he would stare at you with his head tipped to the side and his over-large tongue hanging out. At those moments, we called him Ed because of his resemblance to the third hyena in Disney’s The Lion King.
He was a beautiful, sweet big boy, but he was too much dog for us. We found him a great home with kids to play with. I hope they grow up together, enjoy pittie snuggles, and I really hope that his brain catches up to his muscles.
