19/03/2025
When No Means No:.... Stand Your Ground!
As you all know our Julie the Rough Collie passed away a few months ago.
A few weeks ago my lady wife asked if I was thinking of getting another dog ( please note we still have 3)
I said “to be honest No” I was finding one less dog in the house a bit easier, insurance has gone down, food bills have gone down etc and between Dogzdaycare and our own dogs my life has got slightly easier as Julie in the end was a lot of cleaning up after and negotiating around her requirements which you do not realise until they are no longer here, life was a bit easier, so my life is completely based around dogs ( just the way I like it).
Katie listened intently to my reply and my “No” answer, and replied along the lines of “yes I understand that, it must be less to do, but do you not think there is a big gap left now with Julie gone?”
I dont think i even drew breath “NO” and that was the end of the conversation. , so a “No” had been accepted in my little Male brain..... what I should have thought was, what she meant by “Big Gap?" I soon had my answer.
Everyone please meet Luna , the Great Dane Rescue... just a small dog to fill that “big gap” my lady wife noticed 😂hardly a Chihuahua.
Insuring her costs more than my car each month our food bills well they have doubled... and Shrek would be proud of the size of poops she produces, it leads to the question How do I pick that up? or do I dig a trench to bury?
Luna is around 20 months old so just a pup and still growing... OMG.
I didn’t know whether to get a harness or borrow a saddle from my daughter for her! Still early days and a saddle may actually be the answer as Great Danes don’t fully mature until 3 years old .
Luna arrived a few weeks ago, extremely underweight, due to her pretty unsure and fraught beginnings, rescued by Islay Dog Rescue (our second Rescue from Islay) in Cumnock. The next few months will be a settling in period for Luna and I am sure will be rewarding but will without doubt have its ups and downs her sheer size scares the living daylights out our other three dogs and it will be a very very slow process to introduce her to them and I am talking many months of scent , sight and familiarisation of them to her before let on a long lead of introduction.
But Luna, as it “says on the tin”... is a Gentle Giant, Very clever and Hungry.... very, very Hungry... My wife just loves her ( she loves the underdog , no pun intended) she was in a poor way and had to get to a Foster home as I thought.. think again TinTin before she was beyond help.
It will be like an daily episode from “ the adventures of TinTin” with Luna .
Luna is just the right size of dog for our ever increasing human family a 12 year old granddaughter , 2 x 3 year old grandsons, a 3 month old granddaughter and now identical Twin boys, so a Great Dane is ideal, one gulp and they would be marked absent! anyone would think I consider our dogs more important 🤔than the grandkids, let’s not take a survey on that question 😆.
I find it just incredible how a dog like Luna can be emaciated and so poorly treated , a litter of pups in her first year of life, spayed and brought up from London ( Islay Rescue and Foster people have done well to get some weight on) There is a special place in Hell for these folk that treated her so badly.
Luna is so so friendly , loving and mischievous but has no idea of her own size and power and is scared of her own shadow, so introductions to folk is at arms length with you hand full of hotdogs or chicken... I hope we can make things work for Luna here and she settles and eventually fits in with our odd bunch of eclectic dogs... pretty well sums up our complete human family... Completely dysfunctional.
Katie likes to keep my German ancestry and mentality of things done in order , organised lists and things done timely and throw them into complete chaos, she says it keeps me young.... I think she lies.
So when does “No mean No” to another dog ?
Katie was correct...we just got a small horse instead! .
Watch for the updates.
