Wellesley and Abbey Meet, Play

RUSH: Yes, we put the dogs together last night. Folks, this was the funniest thing. You know, we had Abbey away at kindergarten for the past week while we’re — well, that’s what Kathryn calls it, it’s kind of cute, we take Abbey to her school. There’s no real obedience training going on there. It’s just a bunch of dogs hanging around at the feed bowl. But anyway, we pick up the little puppy on Monday, bring it home, it’s 13 weeks, Abbey is about a year and two months old. And so we were dreading, ‘Okay, what’s going to happen we put these two together?’ We knew what was going to happen when we put the cat Punkin together with Abbey, but we were fretting about it so what we decided to do, we put the little puppy upstairs, brought Abbey home at five o’clock and put her in the library where the puppy had been so she could smell it.

She knew something was up. She was all over Kathryn when she got home, all excited to see Kathryn, got in the library, ‘Uh-oh.’ She started running around sniffing everything, picked up some of the puppy’s toys, wandering all over, jumping on the couch, looking behind doors, ‘Where is this new scent?’ So we’re saying, ‘Oh no, how are we gonna introduce ’em?’ So I said, ‘Let’s do it outside.’ I put a leash on Abbey, took her outside. Kathryn went up and got the puppy, took him outside, and at first it was, ‘Arf, arf, arf, arf,’ barking at each other and trying to lunge at each other. After five minutes they’re playing, they’re running around. It’s the funniest thing. (laughing) I never thought I’d have one dog, much less two, and they’re like fast buddies after five minutes. Even Punkin came down to the kitchen this morning. The puppy is off being shown to family members today, so it’s just Abbey and me in the family room for breakfast and Punkin comes walking in and the dog looks at Punkin and Punkin looks at the dog. You know, Punkin thinks the dog’s stupid, is crazy, you can just tell this.

Punkin for the first time started eating the dog’s food and drinking the dog’s water, and the dog just sat there and looked at it. I said, ‘Abbey, you sit tight.’ And Punkin went through the motions, and it was a peaceful coexistence. I mean it was fascinating. These two little puppies — well, one’s not a puppy anymore, but they’re like best buds. (interruption) Yeah, they’re Old English Sheepdogs, and we got — (interruption) no, it’s not hot inside the estate, H.R., for sheepdogs, and they love going outside. No, no, no. Everything’s fine. Abbey’s at Head Start (laughing) is the way to look at this. (interruption) They do have breakfast. Oh yeah, she gets government — well, it’s not government paying for it, it’s private sector Head Start. I don’t think they feed ’em that much because whenever we bring ’em home they make a beeline for the water and food bowls. But that’s good, you know, that’s good because they have a lot of dogs there, don’t have to worry about taking them all out to do their business. It was great to watch this. And they were just all over each other all night. The little one is feisty, jumping at Abbey and Abbey, you know, barking back at it and chasing each other around the house. It was unbelievable. It just went flawless.