First Installment: The Territorial Mixed Breed

Tootsie, whom many met in the introduction, is a mix between a Poodle, Shih Tzu and a Dachshund. All of these small dog breeds have one thing in common: they are very territorial. For seven years Tootsie was the only dog in the Owen household. She had been fawned over and was never forced to share her space with another dog. The only time she had spent with other dogs is when she occasionally would stay at the dog hotel. Never in a million years did Tootsie ever think that she would be forced to coexist with another dog in her space. We kind of decided to throw her for a loop and really challenge her.

Tootsie was in for a huge surprise the day Waffle was brought home. You cannot do much preparation for bringing another animal into your home other than hoping that they are introduced on mutual ground and not somewhere that would have caused Tootsie to feel too territorial. Nervous about how the dogs would react to one another we let Tootsie do the sniffing of Waffle while she was still in her kennel. We had made sure to do plenty of research on how to go about introducing them so it would go as smoothly as possible. Tootsie was extremely unsure about what this new little bean that we had brought home was. We never imagined that there would be issues because during the first few weeks of them living together they got along great. We think that might have had something to do with how little Waffle was when she first came home. She was tiny enough that there was no threat to Tootsie or to Tootsie's area.

In the coming weeks we learned that acclimating two dogs to each other's personalities was a lot more difficult than we had thought. Tootsie struggled with having to share the attention with Waffle. She had never had to share attention before so this was all a learning experience for her. She would show her jealousy through pouting. Tootsie sulked and hung her head to let us all know that she was unhappy with having to be one of two dogs.

Food and feeding time is a whole other story when bringing a new dog into the house. Tootsie had already struggled with territory issues when it came to her food. She would growl if anyone came too close to her bowl when she was eating her food and she would spring up and stand next to her bowl if one of the cats got too close to it. When Waffle came along Tootsie took territorial eating to a whole new level. They were being fed in two separate areas but if Waffle came too close to the gate where Tootsie was eating on the other side Tootsie would growl or show her teeth to Waffle.