About a year and a half ago, Grandfather got himself a puppy! A companion for him as he enters his dotage.
The little guy is a Maltese.
Clyde
Clyde is a great little guy. Maltese are very small; four to seven pounds is the normal weight in adulthood and they are also single-coated, so they’re cold-sensitive. Clyde weighs 6 pounds.
Clyde, at 6 months, before first grooming.
Clyde after grooming.
Clyde will not be “trained” much; Grandfather lives on a remote ridge top inside 700 acres of woods, meadows and pasture, so Clyde won’t be expected to please anybody but us.
The woods are full of threats to such a small dog though, so he will be strictly a house pet.
Clyde was trained to relive himself on disposable attractant-treated pads; one is partly visible under the kitchen table in the photo below. Grandfather sits on the padded stool on the left and throws a rope toy for Clyde to fetch from the far corners of the kitchen for an hour or so in the morning, until he gets tired of it. He gets his exercise that way. (And Grandfather avoids his that way.)
Clyde was kept in the kitchen during training by the mesh gate you can see closing off the kitchen. An indoor life suits the little guy best in the wintertime, too. Maltese are quite cold-sensitive.
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About the Author: RD Blakeslee is an octogenarian in West Virginia who built his net worth by only investing in that which can be enjoyed during acquisition and throughout life, as opposed to papers in a drawer, like stocks and bonds. You can read more about him here.
Photos: Courtesy of the Blakeslee Family
Too cute, RD. Given that he likes the couch, does he like your bed, too?
My sister-in-law had a Maltese years ago, but I didn’t know about the single-coat thing.
Gee, This little guy is unlike any of the other (many) dogs that have owned me.
He doesn’t get off his couch, except when I transport him into and out of the Kitchen!
It’s his “living room” and we socialize there.
So Boris and Yeltsin, our cats, have an easier life, I suppose. Not sure – I’ve never been a cat (so far as I know).
When I got married, the Honeybee’s cat and my Great Dane had to learn to live with each other. Thankfully, they got along famously. It’s almost as if my Dane knew the cat had become part of the family.
The members of a household do adapt, don’t they?
Clyde is a little brat – tries to scare the cats, but they got wise to him pretty quickly. Now they just ignore him. They know he’s couch-bound.
Our Great Danes always treated our cats well, too, back in the day …
When my mother got her first kitten when I was 12, she held the cat on her lap while we explained to our German shepherd that this was not a furry lunch. He drooled enough to make a puddle. But I still have a photo of the two of them curled up together napping, so all’s well.
Gee, our family has been owned by dogs of several breeds, over the years:
https://lenpenzo.com/blog/id46741-grandfather-says-the-dog-days-are-here.html
A German shepherd Jamby was special here, too. He was extremely intelligent and self-assured. He had been whelped in Easter Europe, where the breed is conserved as working dogs and he was expertly trained for police patrol work in the U.S. Dogs of this caliber are a wonder to behold – one of the highlights of my life.
Interesting, RD. Our shepherd King had been trained as a police dog, but developed hip dysplasia, so was released from the program when he (and I) were 2 years old. That’s when my father brought him home. It took him a while to warm up to the family, but during his afternoon nap I endeared myself to him by banging his tail on the floor, picking up his feet and dropping them, poking in his ear, and scratching his teeth – all while my mother looked on convinced I was dog food. But from that moment, he was my protector. Mom would let 2 yo me go down the street by myself to visit a cousin building a house there. King would not let me go in the street – or anyone else get near me. And he meant what he growled.
Clyde is sooooooo cute!
Sharon, Tatjana (my wife) says she can tell what animals are thinking and she says Clyde thinks you are cute, too.