A couple of years ago, my buddy Bonzo told you about the sizable dog family of Ben and Sarah Hager. There was Lucy the English bull dog, Maggie the Brussels griffon, and Lola the pug. They were a blended family, brought together when Ben met Sarah in Texas and they moved here together. Since then, the humans became more blended – they got married last Halloween. And the dog population expanded by one, a Harlequin Great Dane named Charles.
If you factor in sheer mass, that household grew by leaps and bounds. And there are plenty of those too, for sure.
Charles weighs about 150 pounds now. When Ben got him a couple of years ago for Sarah’s birthday, he weighed about 80. That meant he had a big set of lungs already. The three little ladies all upped their decibel level in response. But no matter how loud they got, Charles didn’t seem to notice.
“Don’t jump in the pool!” Lucy warned, worried that he might get in trouble for breaking house rules.
“No eating off the human’s plate!” bellowed Lola the pug. “Get off the couch!” said Maggie the Brussels griffon, but only because she wanted the couch all to herself.
It didn’t matter whose rules they were or why, Charles just didn’t seem to care. He would turn his back on his humans even when they called him for a treat.
Turns out, Charles is very hard of hearing. It’s taken a lot of patience to teach him right from wrong and he’s still a little anxious about whether he’s in trouble or not.
I’ve told him he needs to teach his humans sign language, like the signs he already uses: pawing at the door to go out, licking his lips when he’s hungry, nudging his nose under their elbows when he wants to cuddle. So far the only sign Sarah knows is putting both hands on her cheeks and opening her mouth. All of us besides Charles know there’s also a scream that goes with that, and it usually comes right after a crash from something near Charles.
By then, it’s too late for Charles to keep from knocking over whatever it was with his great big giant body. So he just looks at her and wonders: was that a yawn? Did she just wake up from a nap? Does that mean it’s time for a run?
You get the picture. Charles gets a lot of mixed signals in the Hager household but he also gets a whole lot of love. And plenty of peace and quiet.
Raven