Rosco and Maverick

This is Rosco. Rosco puts the “Great” into Great Pyrenees.

Pyrs are a breed apart. For starters, they’re herd guarding dogs. Their job is to keep everyone in line, both their charges and any potential predators. They are very brave and will take on anything trying to grab an easy meal.

Great Pyrenees were bred to work in rough, mountainous areas, so they have more dewclaws than your average mutt.

Most dogs have dewclaws—those “thumb” claws—on only their front legs. Interestingly, these claws are absent from wolves (unless they have some dog ancestry). Some dogs, like many German shepherds, have rear dewclaws as well, but it’s rare for most dogs.

Great Pyrenees have double dewclaws on their hind paws. Now, they already have enormous feet furry enough to put a hobbit’s to shame, but those dewclaws turn paws into snowshoes.

They’re huge and heavy, and males basically have a mane. All that fur keeps Pyrs warm and protected from a harsh environment, but it also makes them look even bigger than they already are, and they are huge.

This is Maverick. Maverick’s a boxer/pit/hound mix. He’s got the bounciness and deep chest of a boxer, the loving nature and huge jaw muscles of a pit bull, and the aquiline nose and dangly ears and jowls of a hound dog.

Maverick is a lap dog. You may not think an 80 pound mutt could be a lap dog, but there’s nothing he loves better than curling up on me with his head on my shoulder.

Maverick is very gentle and wants to be friends with everyone.

Rosco is dominant, territorial, and does not take kindly to having another male in “his” space. (You may take a Pyr’s testicles, but you’ll never take his toxic masculinity.)

So I keep them gated off from each other.

A dog sitter’s best friend is the baby gate. We have four. One of them separates the guest rooms from the main house (no accidents or shedding allowed back there). Two of them gate off our kitchen, because whoever built our house had a hard-on for open floor plans with minimal actual doors. All three of these are tension gates that fit in a doorway.

The fourth gate is a long one. Normally it creates a foyer space and keeps dogs away from the front door, but in a pinch I can reposition it to stretch across between the living room and the den. It has attachment points that are supposed to screw into the wall; but I needed it moveable, so we left it free, just bracing it in place with water bottles or chairs or whatever.

So now I have three main areas for the dogs, instead of one (minus the kitchen, where guest dogs are mostly not allowed). This means I have an “airlock” of sorts. A doglock, if you will.

Excluding first thing in the morning, when pottying is an immediate need, Rosco and Maverick go outside separately. Rosco is easy—he’s already in the den, where the back door is. But then after he finishes, I have to get Maverick outside without him being in Rosco’s space. So Maverick waits in the kitchen while I’m outside with Rosco. Then Rosco comes in, moves through the gate to the living room, and I let Maverick into the den. Maverick goes outside, and when we’re done, Rosco goes into the kitchen, Maverick into the dining room, and Rosco back to the den.

Yes, I play musical dogs.

Outside time is both pottying time and exercise time. Bran and Arya go, too, with both dogs, since they refuse to be separated from me. I move myself (and Bran and Arya) occasionally from living room to den and back again so that I spend plenty of loving time with both guests.

It’s the glamorous life of a dog sitter, y’all.