Teaching New Dogs Old Tricks

 I hesitated and wasn't sure I really wanted to, but it seemed it was time.  Time for new dogs!  The old ones haven't gone on to doggie heaven yet, but that was all the more reason to make it happen now, and the fact that our neighbor's dog had nine puppies!  My husband and I both remember how much harder it was with the last round of puppies we had.  Teaching them from scratch was harder than having an older dog who knew the lay of the yard and the rules of the house!

So here we go with two new pups.

We decided on names after asking our grandchildren and boys and daughters-in-law.  The choices were good, well some of them.  R2 and C3 didn't make the cut.  Miss Priss or Missy and Cocoa came close.  We finally settled on Sahara for the more yellow one.  It was a name that Byron had wanted when we got our other yellow dog, Tiny.

And the marbled brown dog got the name of Ginger.  We considered a matched pair of names like Ginger and Mary Ann, both from Gilligan's Island, but Mary Ann didn't see right.

Why two at once?  Our current dogs, Wishbone and Spunky are a little old and a little sick.  Wishbone is in the final stages of a dog disease called Leishmaniosis.  Spunky also has a milder case of the same and also has doggie skin cancer.  Neither one is going to go tomorrow, so we hope the routine things like "out" and "come" and "stay" pass on in the little minds of the new dogs.

It's a little bit of the trick with our current schedule of interior ministry which means leaving them for three days in a row every week, but our neighbor is helping out for the time being with the little ones and our regular dog feeder will come a little more often as we transition into full-time care.

Teaching old dogs new tricks is also a learning curve.  Spunky and Wishbone have a nice quiet routine.  The pups have messed that up a bit.  But perhaps their playful presence with add a little more pep and zip in our house of dogs.

So far, the cat is neutral on the whole mess!  Her comments have been sparse and mostly made with hissing noises.  Having house dogs in Brazil gives more security to our home and yard.  So, they are a necessity even if we didn't really think the time was right.

If only we could teach new tricks to old missionaries as simply?  Or old tricks to new missionaries?  Flexibility in missions work is also a necessity.  Teaching it is not easy.