Saturday, February 7, 2009

And the fur was flying

Literally!
We have four dogs: a 5-year-old Doberman named Samwise, a 4-year-old chocolate Lab named Freya, a 7-year-old cairn terrier named Molly that we adopted from the LT's parents, and a 6-month-old German Shepherd mix named Luna that someone dumped down the road from us back at the beginning of November.
Samwise is the (usually) undisputed alpha dog. He's the only male and he's lived here the longest. The LT and I adopted him less than a week after we bought our house. The three females are in constant battle to figure out their pecking order. When we adopted Molly from the LT's parents, she ended up being over Freya, since she's older. So okay, we have Samwise, Molly, Freya. Freya was pretty much okay with this.
Then we found Luna. She is a puppy and FAR too big for her britches. She took on Molly about a month ago and it seems like she now outranks Molly, the oldest dog in the house. BUT, she has not overtaken Freya (not for lack of trying). So we have a really bizarre pecking order among the female dogs where Molly outranks Freya, Luna outranks Molly, and Freya outranks Luna.
This morning Cee and I were in the basement (we have a split-level house) with the three girl dogs. The boys (the LT & Samwise) were in bed. All three girl dogs were wrestling, fighting, playing, whatever. Then Luna went after Molly and after an impressive tussle, there were several hunks of Molly's fur on the floor. Cairn terriers are mostly groomed by tugging gently on their hair, not combing or cutting. So it's not too surprising that after a fight with Luna, Molly would have lost some hair.
And then Luna, ever obliging, ate the hair.