By Denise Crane

For those of you who can recall my earlier observations of our family dog pack, you may recall that between the one dog in our home and the dogs of our grown children, we had six dogs in our collective pack. So guess what? We have upped the canine count in our pack to seven.

Meet Zentry. He has joined my daughter’s family and shares space with Tank and Nugget and my grandchildren.

When Courtney mentioned they were considering adding a third dog to their home, we spent a lot of time discussing what the ideal dog might be. We talked about adding a female dog since there are already two males in their home. We talked about rescuing a dog that was not a puppy as sometimes older dogs have a harder time being chosen at shelters. We talked about a dog that wasn’t too high energy.

So of course, they came home with an enthusiastic male puppy. 

Thankfully at eight months he is old enough to be housebroken and still comes with all the energy and desire to play and chew and do puppy things. He is a pit mix. He has beautiful coloring. He loves to play. He loves a good belly rub. He is highly interested in food—any kind, and regardless of who the food belongs to. He really wants to be part of the community. He also has a bit of an identity crisis. He lives with two older, smaller dogs. He sees them cuddle in laps and doesn’t seem aware that his fifty pound frame isn’t as conducive to lap cuddles. Then he interacts with our son’s dogs who are his size or larger and then seems to want to be like a big dog with all the big dog wrestling that comes with their brand of play and does not seem to understand why Tank and Nugget don’t want to play like that with him. Courtney has had to break up a fight between Zentry and Nugget because Zentry had the audacity to try and eat the food from Nugget’s bowl while Nugget was still eating. Nugget let Zentry know that was not going to happen. On another occasion a fight broke out when Zentry wanted to play, Tank and Nugget didn’t, and by the time Courtney broke it up, Zen had Nugget pinned down and Tank was basically in his mouth. 

Tank came and stayed at our house for a few days. Thankfully no serious injury was sustained by any of the involved parties.

It reminded me that life in community is messy. New community members bring all their quirks into an existing situation with members who have always brought their own quirks. Territories have been claimed that new members are not always aware of and bump right into. Habits that are long engrained and are largely unnoticed by the existing community are exposed by new members, and adjustments have to be made. So far, the most recent adjustments involve Tank and Nugget doing their best to avoid Zentry, Zentry doing his best to run off energy with lots of walks and running around the trampoline while the kids jump. When needed, all the dogs take a rest from community and interact with other dogs or other humans. The best thing is that Zentry reminds me that while community is messy, almost anything can be resolved with some good belly rubs.