Hi. Linda: In going through my old emails I noticed that there were
no answers to your post so I have decided to add something now, sorry if
it is a little late. I can only tell you that we have a wonderful 10
year old Pyr, Toby and a year ago we decided to bring in a sweet little
7 weeks old Golden, Hannah. I know that this is a different situation to
the one you have but wanted to tell you how Toby felt about Hannah's
arrival. To be honest it took many months before I felt that he was able
to accept her as part of the family, he wasn't about to tear her limb
from limb but wasn't the doting older dog that I was hoping for. When
Toby was 10 weeks old, he joined a household of an older female Golden,
a youngish male Golden and a Bernese in her middle years and they all
accepted him readily, he in turn unfortunately rewarded them by being
quite bossy, particularly with the male Golden, so I probably shouldn't
have been too surprised by his lack of enthusiasm for Hannah. Now a
year later after being very slow with their integration, Toby will play
with her outdoors and thoroughly enjoy himself...I am more
reluctant to let her loose around him too much inside the house
because I don't really know his tolerance level and I do not want to put
her in a situation where she will get hurt. He has "told her off" twice
outside and I was able to intervene, Hannah shows no fear of him and we
can tell she thinks he is the cats meow!! Both of your dogs are old, can
you tell by their temperament how well they might accept a puppy. I know
that Toby and Jake(Golden) had their first altercation when Toby was
about 5 months old. Would you rethink this and allow your older boy to
pass and then consider a puppy, I say this as it is a male that you are
thinking of getting, your older female might do better with a male
puppy. I am sorry to hear that you have this ahead of you, Jake the
Golden also had bone cancer, he was 8 years old and we opted to have his
leg removed but unfortunately he did not wake up after
surgery.....
Jo, Toby and Hannah(Golden) |