Zooka's 21st month, January 2021, was all about his new brother joining the family.

Pretty much everything I had hoped to accomplish with Zooka this month got pushed by the wayside. The major activity this month revolved around helping Zooka's new brother settle in.

There is a separate post introducing Zooka's new brother, so details about him are in that other post. On Sunday, December 27th, Zooka's half brother came to stay with us. It was intended to be temporary. By mid-January, it had become permanent.

Zooka is accustomed to dogs coming and going here at our house. We do a lot of boarding so we've had dogs here since he was very young. In this case, however, this will be the first time he has a permanent new member of the household. And that takes a bit more work to get along and share things. Sharing attention from the Momma is one of the hardest.

Zooka's new brother, Blitzen is actually a half brother. So he is, of course, also a Vizsla. He comes from the same breeder and the same mother. They have different fathers and were born one year apart. Blitzen is 8 months old.

Zooka is normally very good at sharing things like toys. He gets pushy when having to share attention. Though he can do it, it takes some effort on his part. He likes to snuggle when he likes to snuggle. And he likes to have Momma's lap always available in case he wants to snuggle. And he gets a little put out if “his” lap is not available when he wants it. Even though it might be a time when he really didn't want it until somebody else wanted it.

He loves having a play buddy. Normally, he has to wait for a visitor to come and stay. Most of them play nicely with him. Some really do not have that much interest in playing. And some like to play but not nearly as much as he does.

Well, Blitzen loves to play as much as Zooka does. And he is a year younger so he has just as much energy as Zooka does. And he's pretty obnoxious. Sort of like Zooka was at 8 months old. Payback time, buddy!

They have had a couple of instances where there was the potential for a fight to happen. But I caught it and redirected everyone quickly. For the vast majority of the time, they get along very very well. Their play styles are pretty much the same. They have similar energy levels. They like similar things. So they are a very good match for play buddies.

I was concerned at first, because Blitzen came to us with some strong resource guarding behaviors. And he also had some handling issues that turned out to be a result of (at least in part) pain in his back/hips area. I was concerned that those things would result in issues between the two dogs.

Fortunately, the concerns have mostly subsided. I am careful at this stage to separate when chewing on high value items like bully sticks. I separate for feeding. I do that with all dogs. Once they are further settled in and understanding the rules, I can relax about those. But not any time soon.

For now, they are separated when not supervised. While there might not be a problem, I am not taking any chances yet since they are still new together. If they did have a problem and I was not there to interrupt and handle it, I do not know how they would handle it. And there is no reason to test that right now.

Since Blitzen is still on restricted activity, they can play in the house together and they go for walks together with Blitzen on leash. They are not yet able to run in the back yard or off leash together. Much to the chagrin of both boys. They will no doubt have a blast when they can run loose outside together.

For now, they take turns outside. And they both are handling that pretty well. When one goes out, the other waits until the first one comes inside and then rushes out. Usually, Zooka goes out first. And then Blitzen watches carefully and when he gets his turn, he tries to do everything Zooka did when he was out.

Blitzen is definitely the “little brother” who wants to do everything his big brother does. It's fun to watch. It's a good thing that Zooka is mostly a very good boy and sets a good example.

The one place they both struggle is sharing my time. When I am working with one and needing some one-on-one training time, the other one has trouble waiting his turn. We do get some tantrums going on when someone does not want to sit on the sidelines. And they BOTH throw their tantrums. Zooka has struggled with this in the past when I have a boarding dog that I am working with. Sometimes he will lie and watch from the other side of the baby gate and be very patient. Especially if I swing by once in a while and deliver a treat for waiting nicely.

So while I was not able to work on some of the things I wanted to with Zooka this month, we definitely got to see some areas where he actually does need some additional work. Most of the effort this month was working with Blitzen, but by default Zooka got some work on being patient and waiting his turn. Which he clearly needs a lot more practice with!

While Zooka might not love some things about having a younger brother – like having to take turns with training sessions and sharing Momma's attention – I think the benefits to him far outweigh the bad stuff! (And really, it's not “bad” stuff, he just thinks so at the moment.)

We have lots of work remaining to do. And now we have double the teenage boys in our house. So there's double the work to do. Well, more than double, really. But we will get it all done. And we will have two very nice young men in our house.

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