Nephew dog's step has pep

The pup eyed me cautiously from the porch, never lifting his head as I pulled into the driveway. He wasn't too sure who this was visiting him.

As I slid out of the pickup he craned his head to the left to watch me but still didn't move. I hollered his name and Dutch bailed off the porch and immediately began to treat me like an old friend.

I hadn't met this nephew dog (that means he belongs to my sister) until it fell to me to look after the 6-month old Weimaraner for a little over a week. The story was he liked to jump around in front of you. Sure enough, he bounced around in front of me so well that I nicknamed him Pogo.

When I left he didn't try to follow the pickup and all was well. This dog-sitting job was going to be a piece of cake.

The next time I came out he was right there again. The third night he was a little slower coming up and not quite as full of energy. Then the next night he didn't come for quite a while and when he finally showed up he had two buddies with him.

I put food out and all three dogs scarfed it down like it was the last bowl of puppy chow on Earth. I knew that my sister wasn't 100 percent excited about having Dutch in the first place. Two more mouths to feed definitely wouldn't fly.

After a series of text message exchanges with sis I found out these were the neighbor's dogs and he had just left to go elk hunting with my brother. I decided I wasn't going to be the neighborhood dog-sitter and I wasn't going to allow the pup in my charge to run with the older dogs, so I loaded him up and took him to meet his cousins (my dogs Flint and Ranger).

Nobody got bloodied in their meeting so I thought things were going to work out fine. The first night Dutch slept on the patio in a lawn chair and never figured out the dog door. By the next night he had figured out how to come and go through the dog door and I had to shut him out on the porch.

Finally his last three nights at our place I gave into my wife's pleading and brought him inside as the temperature plunged toward the teens. He slept through the night with no accidents.

It seemed like he got along well and when I came home at night he was tired and would sit quietly with me. In fact, the only thing I found chewed up was a piece of fake fruit.

I guess my wife was having a different experience with a lot of barkingand dog romps involving her tennis shoes during the daytime with Dutch. All this actually caused her to celebrate when I loaded him up to take him home.

Dutch and I truly bonded while he was staying with us and I even helped him write his letter to Santa before he left.

He wants a dog door and size 7 Nike Air Jordans so that he can keep that bounce in his greeting.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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