Baron's Doggie Relatives

Although you might think so the way I talk about him, Baron is not the only dog in our very close knit family. As I mentioned before, my parents have a toy poodle named Duchess. She is a hoot. She is very playful when she wants to be, and her favorite activity is swinging on the porch swing (but only when my mom swings her; the rest of us apparently don't swing her high enough--and no, I'm not kidding!).

Duchess loves the swing.

Then there is Baxter. Baxter came to live with my brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew in 2007.  My niece was wanting a dog, and my dad had been looking for a while when he responded to an ad in the paper for mini schnauzers. He came home with this:

Baxter's first photo. How sweet is he!

My all time favorite picture of Baxter and my nephew. Baxter was about 5 months old and my nephew was 3.

And then Baxter turned into this:

Baxter makes a good pillow.



Baxter and his bone.

My favorite story about Baxter is when he went for his first hair cut. At that time, we thought Baxter was a mini schnauzer. Never having had one or really been around one, we had no concept of how big he should be. My dad took Baron to our groomer, Sheiler (there is a story about this name), and she took one look at Baxter and said, "Hmmph, that ain't no mini." 40 pounds later, we realized she was right! When she first saw Baron, she said, "Now that's a mini!"

Baron loooves his family, and he loves his doggie relatives. Unfortunately, the feeling is not mutual. Baron has seen Duchess on more than one occasion, and it has not gone well. She particularly takes offense to Baron trying to come up to my mother to be petted because, well, Duchess thinks my mom belongs to her. (You can ask my dad about this, too!)

After I'd had Baron about 3 months, Baxter's family was getting ready to go out of town and they wondered if we would let Baxter stay with us while they were gone. Being the fabulous doggie sitters we are (you'll hear more about Zenzi later), we agreed. I did have the forethought to suggest that we get the doggies together before then to see how they would interact. Poor Baxter. Baron, who weight maybe 8 pounds at the time, chased Baxter all over Baxter's house. Baxter kept looking at us like, Why are you allowing this injustice to continue??? Baron thought it was loads of fun, given that his favorite game in the world is chase--be it being the chaser or the chasee. Baxter, however, disagrees. Apparently even after we left, Baxter walked around for a couple of days with his head down, clearly embarassed that this little pup had chased him all around his own house.  Poor thing.

Needless to say, Baron doesn't spend much time with his family dogs.