I stepped on the scales Sunday holding Reno the puppy, who kept trying to lick my face and made getting an accurate reading a challenge.
I finally got the weight, put him down and stepped back on the scales.
A quick bit of subtraction and I determined that Renocerus, as he is sometimes known, was up to 23.4 pounds of solid dog.
A month ago, he was at 12 pounds and six weeks ago, when he joined our family as a wiggly eight-week-old, he weighed nine pounds.
You may remember that someone dumped the little guy at our house on a Sunday afternoon. J.R. the cat spotted him behind the air conditioner and I lured him out with a piece of chicken.
We tried to find his owner, in case he had wandered off, but one was not to be found. So, we decided to let him live with us.
Officially, he is Kindra’s dog and she has shown a motherly interest in taking him outside, giving him medicine and teaching him to sit for snacks and such.
The vet said he probably is a mix of German Shepherd and either a Pyrenees or an Anatolian shepherd.
At first, we thought Anatolian, but these days we’re leaning toward Pyrenees.
We already have a Pyrenees/German Shepherd mix named Monroe, and she and Reno have become fast friends and playmates.
They play-fight for hours on end, biting the air and occasionally each other’s ears and cheeks, snarling like wolves fighting over an elk and scaring the daylights out of the cats.
Kindra did some research, and by research I mean she looked it up on Google, and determined that such behavior is the German shepherd coming out in them. Apparently, that’s how they play with each other.
Monroe dwarfs Reno now, so he jumps on the hearth so they can play-fight at eye level.
Fortunately, they are able to switch on and off and can go in an instant from play-fighting to asking for a belly rub or begging for a snack.
Martin does not join in these activities and shows by his expression that he wishes a heeler or a bird dog puppy had come along.
Monroe steps in at 92 pounds right now and an online calculator indicates Reno will be her size or a little bigger.
With almost 200 pounds of dog between them, they will have to play-fight outside.
Reno apparently had taken cuteness lessons before he arrived at our house. He has tan fur, fuzzy ears and dark eyes surrounded by a light mask.
Within the last week, he has started wearing his right ear almost completely erect, but his left one still flops and stays flat.
It’s a comical look, but one I hope he outgrows.
He is showing signs of becoming a good watch dog. He joins Martin and Monroe when they bark at coyotes, although he doesn’t seem to understand why.
He’ll bark and strike a challenge pose when a delivery person pulls up or comes to the door.
He likes to hang out with Kindra, which is nice.
Shortly before Reno arrived, she’d said she would like to have a dachshund. Reno will grow up to be the equivalent of,
Reno will grow up to be the equivalent of, oh, maybe five or six good-sized dachshunds when he’s grown, so she got her wish and then some.