Theresa Lewis

The adventures of Misty and Sasha continues

 

Several years ago, my brother and his wife lived in the countryside. They had a dog that they called Gus. I know that you have all heard of “a boy named Sue” sung by Johnnie Cash. Well, both my brother and his wife were certain they had a male dog so they named it Gus. Gus was nearly a year old by the time they realized that their dog was a female. It gave all of us a good laugh.

My brother was doing a four month internship at a business in Montreal. During that period, my brother, sister-in-law and Gus stayed with my husband and me.

Our two Samoyeds had to adjust to having another dog in the house. I surely can’t say it was easy, but after a few days, Misty (one of my Samoyeds) accepted Gus as I was sure she would. Sasha, my other Samoyed didn’t like Gus at all and would only barely tolerate having her in the same house. To show her displeasure at having a strange dog in the house, Sasha would constantly terrorize Gus to keep her in her place.

When meal time came around, I always gave my dogs a choice of foods. They could pick canned food, or dry food. Misty always chose canned food. Sasha, on the other hand would mostly choose dry food, but would occasionally choose canned food. We tried her on all kinds of dry foods, but the only ones she would eat were “Gains Burger” or “Kibbles and Bits”. There was no way I could get her interested in eating any other sort of dry food.

My brother insisted that Gus should eat only the dry food he brought with him. Gus was fed in a different location from our dogs just so that there wouldn’t be any squabbles. It worked out well for all concerned for the first couple of months.

One day, I heard Gus crying and whining. I went to see what the problem was. I saw that while Gus had been upstairs, Sasha had placed a dog biscuit on the seventh step from the bottom then she lay across the fourth step from the bottom. Every time Gus tried to come downstairs, Sasha growled menacingly at her. It was a control tactic that she used on Misty from time to time and now she was doing it to Gus.

Sasha must have telepathically communicated with Gus to make her fear passing that dog biscuit. I went over and picked up the dog biscuit and told Sasha that it wasn’t nice to do that to Gus. As soon as the dog biscuit was gone, Gus ran down the rest of the stairs and Sasha just lay there as though she didn’t know she had done anything wrong.

Misty and Sasha were a good six years older than Gus who was still pretty much a puppy at a year old. Misty was a high energy dog and loved to play with Gus, but Sasha, as a low energy dog, enjoyed lounging around all day. Unfortunately, Gus didn’t understand that and she kept trying to get Sasha to run and play.

One afternoon, Sasha was just about as annoyed as a dog can be. She decided to teach Gus a lesson. Sasha took Gus’ food dish that had all her food in it and carried into the kitchen where Gus was dancing around making a pest of herself. Sasha lay on the floor and pulled the dish close with her teeth and wrapped her paws around it and started eating Gus’ food. Every time she came up for air, Sasha would pause for a moment and stare arrogantly at Gus.

Gus knew exactly what Sasha was doing by eating her food and she wailed like a whipped puppy. I watched, but didn’t interfere because I knew how much Gus had been taunting Sasha for months. When Sasha had devoured the entire one gallon ice cream container of food, she picked up the empty dish and threw it in Gus’ face then walked out of the kitchen. If I hadn’t witnessed that for myself, I don’t think I would have believed it.

The food that my brother fed Gus was one that Sasha didn’t like and the container was full to the top. I was afraid that Sasha would burst after having eaten so much. I have to say, Gus learned not to bother Sasha after that. Heaven only knows what message Sasha communicated to Gus as she stared at her while eating her food. Whatever it was, Gus sure got the message.

 More adventures of Misty and Sasha to follow

The End