Leader of the Pack

The Adventure Pack

Oliver has been full of attitude on our walks lately.  He barked at most of the dogs we passed and even someone on a skateboard.  Meanwhile, Benny and Rucksack trotted along contentedly without paying much mind to the other dogs.  There was one friendly dog we stopped to say hello to and Oliver only barked a couple times before giving him a sniff and relaxing.  Benny and Rucksack alternated stick-carrying duty with a small, thick chunk that they brought along for most of the time.

The Play Pack

We have a new member in the Play Pack whose first day was today: Oscar!  Oscar is full of spunk and very active.  Maverick greeted him nicely, without his usual grumbles when coming face-to-face with a new dog.  Oscar seemed a bit intimidated by his bigger packmates, Coco and Benny, and was a bit snippy when they first leaned down to sniff him.  Coco took offense and the two of them got noisy with each other, barking and growling and hopping around at close quarters.  I broke them up and had them just sit next to each other for a few minutes to settle down.  At the park, I walked Oscar and Coco around on-leash together for a little bit so they could get used to hanging out near each other.  After that, I discovered Oscar's love of tennis balls and got two balls to throw - one for Oscar in one direction and one for Coco in the other.  Despite his small size, Oscar actually beat Coco to the ball pretty often unless I threw it especially far.  He's really quick off the mark but Coco outpaced him on the long fetches.  Maverick and Benny dove after shorter throws, or balls that I kicked around as we wandered the park as a group.  Maverick stuck close by today instead of following his usual M.O. of wandering off by himself to sniff around the fence.  Benny played with a wiggly pup who looked like a Husky with German Shepherd coloring.  The pup jumped all over him and then Oscar ran over and, in turn, jumped all over the pup.  After that, the pack had a fun time of running in and all around the tree stumps and Coco teased Oscar to chase her all over the place at high speed. They got annoyed every once in a while when one of them got too pushy and then they would bark at each other, but they settled down and came to me when I called them, and then they would get back to running around playfully.