u/DruidSpider

Find the Bull Terrier!

(The spare bedroom/office doesn’t usually look quite this chaotic; all of the things piled up haphazardly are things I’ve previously had to save from Pandora)

I don’t think normal is quite the right word with these two in the house, but Ursa is back to himself and the incision is healing very well! He’s not allowed to get wet for another week and no treadmill or crazy stuff but I’m letting him and Pandora play again (under close supervision) which has made them both a lot happier.

I was going to refill the pools when he was inside to avoid the usual berserker attack on the hose. Don’t feel bad for him sitting in the empty pool; he almost never gets in the water, he just wanted to fight the hose.

Pandora, Ziggy, Leeloo and Ursa.

Pandora’s ears are slowly coming up, it’s more noticeable when she swivels them to listen to something.

I’m always supervising, but he’s actually very tolerant and careful with her. I’m balancing out the perpetual wrestling matches with one on one time with each of them; she is going on adventures to get exposed to new experiences, he gets his park outings and treadmill time, and they have separate walks, classes, and training sessions. I’m really pleased with how things are going so far!

He has an echocardiogram scheduled for the middle of September and hopefully right after his that postponed neuter will be getting rescheduled. I’m not looking forward to keeping him quiet (and the two of them apart) while he heals; I really wanted to have that out of the way before she got here, but there was a previously undetected heart murmur on his pre-surgical exam last month.

The cardboard was actually a sacrifice to give Pandora something to do and all the stuff sticking out from underneath the aquarium stand was to keep her from crawling under there and getting stuck a third time: I had to have a coworker lift the end of the stand to get her out the first time and she immediately shot back under there after being rescued.

She actually did very well; after the initial flurry of destruction, she pulled my jacket off a chair and took a long nap on it while I worked, ate her frozen stuffed Toppl snack, and didn’t have any accidents on the carpet. Best of all she got lots of good social contact with a variety of people and exposure to city noises outside.

After watching my pea puffers nearly starve themselves to death in the month following hurricane Helene when frozen food was impossible to get and I couldn’t source any snails, I decided to let my little group age out and not get any more after they were gone and I’m down to three from the original seven. It’s kind of odd that they wouldn’t eat freeze dried food when they were literally starving, but all of a sudden are showing interest in it when they are well fed. Maybe there’s something different about this batch? I don’t think I’d ever bought Top Fin bloodworms before.

I went on a very long trip to go get her this past weekend and she’s settling in very nicely. Her breeder’s nickname for her was ‘Dora the Explorer’ and she lives up to that! She’s bold, inquisitive, and very smart. I’m really looking forward to watching her grow and seeing what she likes to do; she’s already showing an aptitude for parkour.

Currently, the only contact she has with the other dogs is out in the backyard or on our pack walks around the property. Indoors, there’s always a baby gate between wherever she is and the rest of them for now.

It’s a bright blue fake deer antler, and it was five bucks at Tractor Supply. I had gone there looking for more of the giant fake Rams horns that somebody had told me were on clearance, but they didn’t have any of those so this was sort of a ‘well I’m here anyway, I might as well get something out of the clearance bin’ purchase and I wasn’t sure Ursa would even like it.

Apparently, he likes it. A lot. 😄

I’m contemplating adding a female puppy to my household; it’s actually always been my plan for another year or so in the future but I may be doing this a lot sooner than planned and I’m just curious how that has worked out for others here who have more than one Bull Terrier?

I’m not a novice dog owner and have always had more than one dog at a time over the years, but these guys are so weird that they might as well be their own species so what I’m looking for is Bull Terrier specific perspective.

I know this will cause quite a bit of upheaval and honestly I don’t think I’ve recovered from Ursa’s piranha puppy stage. There’s likely to be some resentment since he’s used to getting all the attention. I’d be walking them separately for the foreseeable future and would need to spend a lot of time getting her acclimated to things out in the world so that will unavoidably cut in on his time. It will be twice the work juggling training and classes for two dogs. Twice the vet and insurance costs, and eventually double the entry fees for barn hunt and other sports. But Ursa would also have someone he can play with (once she grew a bit) something he’s never had.

Baby picture of Ursa for tax.

I’m sure he’s actually out all the time when I’m not around, but this is the first glimpse I’ve gotten in probably a year as he teleports under the sand if there is any movement outside the tank. The angelfish photo bombing the video is actually the only reason I was able to get that close; the fish swimming back and forth (the angels beg for food even right after I’ve fed them) masked my approach.

I posted this little guy here a few years back when I first got him, he was small and very underweight at the time. It’s nice to see him looking big and healthy! The friends that I got for him shortly afterwards turned out to be a different species, they are still around too, but they stayed small.

Last pic has Leeloo the Chihuahua for scale (that crate is actually there for her) and if you look at the close-up picture you could see that Ursa’s knee is actually right beside his shoulder. I wish I could’ve seen how he got in there.

Also yes, that’s a form for making concrete footers. Doesn’t everyone furnish with things they find in the contractor section of Home Depot?

I enjoyed seeing all the baby BT pics and videos here so much yesterday, it was really awesome. 🙂

Because I hate posting without a pic, here’s one of Ursa at his favorite park a few weeks ago.

This is my favorite puppy stage, before they turned into velociraptors. It’s so fleeting…