Meet Max

Well, I spoke to my new neighbour, R, today about his chihuahua, Max.  After consulting a few people about how to best approach the situation, I decided to up-play the “your dog is in so much distress” angle and downplay my own pain & suffering.  He was very sympathetic and quite surprised that sweet little Maxie was so loud.  He was a bit taken aback when I told him it sounded like someone was murdering a small pig next door and that this went on all night (I was up at 3:30am this morning).  What ended up happening was me offering to dog sit when he is on nights, taking little Max for walkies, getting him tireder, keeping him company, etc., until it’s time for me to go to bed, at which point I return Maxie to his own side of the duplex and hope for the best.

I don’t mind doing this at all; it was my idea, and it’s a win-win for everyone.  I get some P&Q and some doggy company (which I really enjoy), Maxie gets exercise, stimulation, and company, and Juno can get some much-needed exposure to doggies so our move in Oct. isn’t as shocking as it could otherwise be.

Max is quite a cutie, as you can see.  I actually really liked having him around this evening, and as you can see, he looks very dapper in his new faux diamond studded collar and jaunty blue bell! 😀

He’s not used to kittehs, however.  Upon first sighting Juno, he freaked out and started growling and barking at her.  She looked down her nose at him from atop the stairs, surely thinking “I can take that little sucker down” because Juno is twice as big as Max is.  Once he started chasing her, I had to close her in a room for a while.

We went for two walkies this evening.  He’s good on a leash and he’s really social with other dogs.  We met two Great Danes, for instance, and it turned out they were former neighbours of his.  He was very happy to see them.  We ran into several other doggies as well and he was thrilled to bits and wanted to play.  Unfortunately, all the doggies were much much larger and he had a hard time sniffing their asses, but he was happy to have some canine company from what I could see.

Other than that, he just spent the evening trotting around my place obsessively sniffing like he had ADD or something.  When I let him out on his tether, he looked completely lost, though, as if he had no idea what to do in the yard.  I tried to play fetch with him but he didn’t have a clue what that was all about so it was a bit of a fail.

He’s back next door now and he’s been quiet so far, but just in case, I am going to put earplugs in tonight so I can sleep through the night.