What a beautiful pack!!!
Lol, of course, I’m terribly biased in favor of sighthounds as I am a Whippet girl...love all animals, but didn’t really think I’d ever have a dog.
Dog sitting for friends convinced me that I *needed* one, BUT I sort of turn into Howard Hughes around most dogs; can’t resist petting and cuddling them, immediately need to wash the “tacky” feeling off my hands after doing so. A ton of breed research later and I ended up with my heart dog, a Whippet I named Portia (Shakespeare’s Portia was beautiful, intelligent, kind, had a happy story...also, love the quote “So shines a good deed in a naughty world” which also happens to sum up how I felt about Portia). Portia and my GCC BellaBelle loved each other (never relaxed my vigilance with interaction, and never had an issue). A year after needing to say goodbye to Portia, BellaBelle still asks for her at times, saying “go get Portia? better get Portia!”
Before Portia was diagnosed as terminal in April 2019, I had been considering getting a puppy, so the baby would learn some of Portia’s mannerisms and ways...after all, Portia and I lived together so seamlessly! A couple of months into Portia’s treatments, my human guy encouraged me to ask the specialist vet about the puppy idea, and to my surprise the vet said it could be good for Portia’s morale. The deciding factor was my fear of an inability to cope when I inevitably lost Portia, so, six months before Portia’s worst decline and goodbye, eight week old “Polly”/Hippolyta came home.
BellaBelle approves our newer flockmate, and has even started training Polly! BellaBelle goes to the lowest corner of her cage and calls Polly over by making kissing noises and saying, “kiss you beak? wanna kiss you beak!” Polly trots over and puts her nose to the bar space, BellaBelle kisses her on the nose with a loud “smacking”/kissing noise, then throws Polly a Zupreem pellet
Sorry this became so long...