Sibling Rivalry

Anyone who is a sibling has probably experienced this to some degree.  Your brother/sister is in competition with you to get all the good things that your parents and life has to offer.  This can lead to stressful encounters and in some cases I have read about in the news, lawsuits and worse yet, homicide.  Luckily for my sister and I it never devolved into anything more than a few physical scuffles, name calling and tears.  The physical scuffles were confined to our very early childhood (meaning that she being almost three years older than me and therefore much bigger did not hesitate to use her physical advantage in conflicts before she reached the 'age of reason' - also known as comprehending that 'parents will punish you if you slug your sister') and we weren't allowed to use course language, so the name calling was typically made up words that sounded bad (she once called me a 'sclurge' which did not infuriate me as much as the fact that she would not tell me what that word meant).  Eventually we learned to ignore one another in spectacularly spiteful ways (sticks and stones are nothing compared to the pain of a sister's cold shoulder).  Finally we grew up and no longer needed the sibling rivalry, but it served it purpose to harden us appropriately to the travails of the common workplace.

I had forgotten about sibling rivalry for the most part until recently in having to watch it develop in my own little fur children.  I don't think it will come as a surprise to anyone to learn that my dogs are jealous of one another.  It is not just a same species thing either.  My dogs and my cats are jealous of one another and seek to one up each other all the time.  One of my cats, the smallest of the bunch, will saunter into the house when we open the front door and proceed to nonchalantly wander over to the closest dog and rub up against them, all the while looking up at me and purring.  The dogs are quite taken aback, but also powerless to do what they really want to do which is nip that cat and make her run.  She knows they will be chastised if they are even slightly rough with her.  She also knows that if I was not present she would not be able to get away with this kind of behavior, so she really pours it on thick - headbutting and purring and pushing into them until they give ground to her.  She is willing to chase them all over the house like this, but I recognize it for what it is and keep her from bullying them too much.

The biggest sibling interaction problem I have is with the dogs.  It seemed to begin from the moment we brought little Trudy our Border Collie home.  Lewey, the Westie was convinced that we had actually brought in some sort of vermin and he was going to do us a favor and dispatch it post-haste.  It took several days of him biting the puppy barrier and being told NO! before he realized he was not going to be allowed to kill and eat the puppy.

Our cat Dorie, Trudy at 7 weeks and Lewey, who still thinks puppy should be on the menu.

He eventually realized how great it was to have a puppy to play with and for a little while things were quite nice in Lewey land.

He didn't mind so much when she grabbed him by the face because after all, she was very small.

He even let her sometimes pin him down and it was all great fun because after all, if he really wanted to...

He could show her who was boss.

King Lewey as a happy Alpha-male, top dog of the world

Then the sky fell, or more accurately, growth hormone began to surge through little Trudy and she did not remain the little thing she was.  She became She-Ra - Princess of Power practically overnight.  At first, King Lewey was merely annoyed.  He couldn't actually figure out what the problem was and how he had gone from being bigger than Trudy to being smaller than her.  The only way to resolve this was to challenge her.

You can almost hear the western gunfight background music...

The only problem was that Trudy was sneaky.

She refused to fight fair and become small again.  She even went as far as to flaunt her size...

and bite his neck...

... and even put her paws on him and stood over the top of him.

This all made Trudy very happy.

Princess Trudy contemplating how to annoy Lewey further

It also made Lewey something other than happy...

Well, at least he is in the shade...

We keep telling Lewey that eventually Trudy will grow up and stop being such a bully.  Believe me we do our best to keep the peace between the two of them, but sometimes Lewey decides to take matters into his own paws.

This is all very humorous until one of us humans gets caught in the crossfire.  I have been nipped by Lewey as he was trying to repay Trudy for bowling him over in the back yard and knocking him into the fig tree.  I had witnessed the encounter and had Lewey beneath my feet to defend him as Trudy was making whirling passes around the yard completely oblivious to my commands.  As she came near I reached out to push her away at exactly the same time Lewey leaped forward to exact his revenge.  He caught me with his little middle teeth so hard it left a quarter size bruise on my forearm - mind you he did this through my long sleeve shirt (he was very, very sorry afterward and looked completely embarrassed).

Just last night I was doing my best to dry the dynamic duo off after they had been out in a very welcome and unusual rain storm.  I had them blocked into the washroom and had dried them both fairly well but I wanted to check and make sure their feet were clean.  My intention was to finish with Lewey first and then let him go into the house while I worked on Trudy.  She decided as I bent down to finish little Lewey's legs that she was through waiting.  She proceeded to leap over both of us, but failed to calculate that I was in motion toward the floor.  Her shoulder caught me in the side of the jaw and I saw stars.  Luckily my jaw was merely bruised instead of broken (she was not sorry in the slightest for bumping into me and in fact wondered why I was yelling).

So yes we all have our work cut out for us.  Lewey has to somehow re-establish his kingship.  Trudy must learn to be a calm and considerate princess.  I must learn to stop getting in the way of dogs in motion.

Trudy the Artist

I have that incredible feeling that can only be obtained when your child does something really smart, artistic and creative.  Let's put aside the fact that I am talking about my Border Collie when I say child and let me just bask in the moment.  My little Trudy is an artist. As you can see from the top picture, Trudy has made part of the cedar fence a wooden canvas.  She draws on it each and every day.  At first I was just noticing her tendency of rebounding off this fence every higher and higher in her attempts to reach the squirrels.  My husband said he looked out our kitchen window one day and thought he saw a bird in flight, but it turned out just to be Trudy having launched herself about six feet off the ground with her efforts.

She typically rebounds off this fence in order to take a look over the six foot chain length fence that connect to it at this corner.  The first time I saw her doing this I just about came unglued because she did it so effortlessly and it was very evident that if she wanted to she could easily go sailing over the six foot fence.  At that point in her life I had been delaying her spaying, figuring that waiting until she was about a year old would give her a better amount of time to grow more fully.  When I saw her 'bird in flight' abilities I scheduled her spaying for the next week.  All she needed to go sailing over the fence was a reason and I was not about to let Mother Nature give her any hormonal input.  So with her natural urges curtailed I guess she turned as many do to artistic endeavors.  I think she is rather talented, I will let you decide for yourself.

This is a portion of her wooden canvas and has not been retouched in any way.  You can see how she has applied many layers to create texture and has also used the natural structure of the fence in this work.  Look closely and you will see the bear.

The Bear

I took the liberty of outlining her creation in red for the ease of your viewing, even though this diminishes her work slightly.  If you now look back up at the non-outlined image you will see it clearly.  What is more you may also see that this is a composite sketch.  Look to the right of the bear and you will see the mule deer.

Bear and Mule Deer

Once again I outlined the images so you can see more clearly where to look.  I find the works even more impressive due to the fact that as far as I know, Trudy has never seen a bear or a deer.  Maybe a deer because after all she was found abandoned at a hunting lease, so maybe she saw a deer there.  But even so, that was back when she was a wee baby of less than seven weeks.  Impressive memory if she is drawing from that experience.  

Now this next part of the canvas is from the upper right side and displays yet another animal theme.

 It took me a while to see it and I believe it is still a work in progress based on some lack of definition in the mane to the lower right but as you can see in the outline it is clearly a lion.

The Lion

Trudy also has another canvas on the back fence.  Sadly I have had to cover up this work of art because as she draws here she likes to use her back feet and hang her front legs over the top of the six foot fence, effectively doing a chin up.  Since her body was rising higher and higher with each effort I felt it was just a matter of time before she accidentally vaulted over.  Therefore, I put a lawn cart in the way, forcing her to draw on another part of the fence that has a large amount of vines at the top as a barrier to 'escape'.  So this work is unfinished and yet I feel you will find it has merit.

Now taken as a whole, you can see a lot of energy and emotion, but not much specific drawing, however if you look at it section by section you will see the brilliance of her work.

This is the lower section of the canvas and at first my husband and I debated as to what this creature was.  He said Graboid from the movies Tremors, and while it definitely looks like that in the front part to the left of the drawing, I think she meant this creature to have legs.  I think you will agree there is a close resemblance to a Triceratops.

The Triceratops

The jumble of legs I interpret as her way of revealing movement.  What a smart girl.  She obviously has never seen a Triceratops, but she did recently chew up a section of our encyclopedia.  I am pretty sure she devoured the T section.  And there I was thinking she was just being destructive when she was just doing research.

This section is taken from the upper right part of the canvas.  She obviously is mostly interested in doing wildlife scenes.

I hardly need to outline this one at all because it is so clearly her depiction of a bird.  I think though she is doing a cross between a mockingbird and a horned owl.

The Bird

 So as you can no doubt see I have a very talented girl on my hands.  If you see anymore images that I have missed please let me know.  Right now she seem content with this single media, but who knows when she might branch into other artistic avenues.