Titan: The Not-So-Hostile Takeover

We’ve now had Titan with us for almost three days, and he’s completely won us all over.  With the exception of bit of night time drama the first night in his crate, he’s been an absolute dream to have around.  Now that he’s sleeping peacefully in his crate through the night, I think I can say he’s the perfect dog.  He’s calm, much more calm than our two nutjobs, he is very cuddly, obedient and an absolute pleasure to take out for a walk.

He’s charming, that’s what he is!  He’s a little Charmy McCharmypants.  He’s so cute that we will all let him get away with anything!

Even the dogs will let him get away with things we’ve never imagined. He can hang out with them, sleep next to them and has turned my dogs from antisocial little wackos to calm, accepting members of a pack (oh yes, I watch the Dog Whisperer).

There is only one problem though, the little dude is playing us like a fiddle!

See the photo up there of Bailey next to me on my chair?  That’s his favorite place in the world.  He will spend most of his day ‘checking in’ with me to see if now is a good time for him to come up for a snooze.  I’ll either tell him no or I’ll scoot over to make space for him.  The more squeezed in he is, the happier he becomes.

You may be wondering what this has to do with Titan.  Well…

Apparently Titan likes it in there as well!  So now the race is on when I sit on my chair. Who will get here first? Who can jump the quickest?  Who is able to leap onto my lap and contort themselves into a pretzel to turn around and squish themselves into the gap first.  On this occasion, Titan was the quickest and Bailey was not a happy camper, but let him keep the spot.  He looked at me with what appeared to be unforgiving eyes and then went to the sofa to sulk.

I felt bad but look how cute Titan looks!  I knew Bailey had a lifetime of hip squish in his future, and he needed to learn to share anyway.  At least that’s what I told myself.

He stayed in that spot for over an hour, with the most adorable little snore… I didn’t want to get up and disturb him, so I sat there knitting and watching TV shows as he snoozed.

Bailey isn’t the only one who has fallen victim to this!  A few weeks ago I posted the above photo on Facebook because Pixel was looking so cute basking in the sun in her basket.  The dogs love this basket, especially since I caved and put one of our really cushy pillows in there.  One or the other can usually be found curled passed out in this spot. Other than their crates, this is the one place they can lay down undisturbed for a nap without having to worry about anyone wanting them to share their space. Until recently, anyway…

Titan is a basket ninja!  On the times that Bailey wins the great race to the chair and Pixel isn’t paying attention, he’s in that basket before you can say WHATTHEHELLTHATSMYSPOT!

The dogs don’t seem to mind and there are no power plays to try to get him to move, so I can only assume that they too have been won over by his charms. Thus tolerating his basket hogging tendencies.

There are limits to what we will tolerate though.  Just this morning there was an incident.  A standoff, if you will.

WHATTHEHELLTHATSMYSPOT!! Unacceptable!

Xander had gotten up a few minutes before me this morning and when I came out to the living room I found this.  Titan had taken up residence in my chair behind my laptop!

I was all, dude… that’s my spot!

Then he was all like… not anymore, foo!

That’s when I got all pack leader on his ass and showed him who was boss.

I got all up on him and was like … Down, get down! DOWN!!!! *Snap fingers * psst! Cesar Millan would have been proud.

Ok, not really.  I was completely owned.

Didn’t Cesar once say something about compromise?  No really, I’m pretty sure he did.