*Fiona and Lily looking fierce but actually playing.
Oh setters. You love them like children and assume that they will act as such. Like real life brothers and sisters. That is until they really act like real life brothers and sisters.
Last week Lily and Fiona were taking part in their late afternoon chase. They do this pretty much every day, one will play bow and then a tackle will occur and then the great chase. I can pinpoint exactly the route of the great chase as the grass has been worn away in the shape of a racetrack as they loop the yard after one another. I love that they can get their ya-ya's out this way and play with one another. So imagine my surprise last week when the chase was interrupted with a yelp of pain - Lily had stepped on the edge of a garden tool I left out in the grass. The race stopped - Fiona's hackles were up nervously over this change in emotion. Before I could intervene, Caelan, our 7 year old Irish Setter and alpha zipped outside to take charge of the situation. She pretty much runs this house so I guess the thought of any emotion being out of balance was too annoying for her to let by.
*Our alpha Caelan with the sweet face. Don't be fooled. She'll rat you out in a New York minute.
Caelan is what I like to call well, okay, I call her a bitch. This scrawny little puppy mill reject took over the throne when our two older males Fergus and Seamus passed away 6 years ago within months of each other. We naturally assumed Dugan our eldest male Irish would take over as alpha being he was such a brute, but imagine our delight in seeing out emaciated little 35 pound rescue dog boss 78 pound Dugan around and well, me.
It was cute the first few years. Now we realize her royalty act is no act. You better have a cookie after she goes potty. There are no exceptions to this rule and goddammit we were the idiots to potty train her with food, so who are we to argue? She is the first to rat somebody out. She'll go and bark a very distinct whiny bark if Lily is chewing the TV remote or something she shouldn't be. She'll alert us by coming to us and growling if Dugan is downstairs in the garbage. She sits at the doggie door and "allows" Lily, Fiona and Dugan to come back in the house at her discretion. At night she cuddles up to my husband and gives me daggers as I move her off my side of the bed. No fool - she "pretends" to curl up on a dog bed until she hears me sleeping then slinks her way back onto the bed next to him. I have feigned snoring and watched her with one eye slit open and she actually gives me a once-over like "yea - she's out!"
So it was no surprise she was not having any of this tension during Lily and Fiona's play time. She went over to put her neck over both of them in an effort to chill out and the next thing I knew I had 3 girls in a cat fight. Well, no, actually a dog fight. Snarling and biting included.
It lasted all of 15 seconds and Lily had a scratch under her eye and Fiona had some slobber on her back and Caelan had a chomp on her ear. Nothing stitch worthy.
As I cleaned the minor wounds with some novalsan I gave all of them a stern lecture about "loving your sisters!" This included some snippets I am sure my own Mother has said in the past as a Mom to 3 daughters. "You have friends come and go, but you're sisters for life!" and "Why would you hurt your sister, you love her, you'd be lost without her!" and the infamous "Don't bite your sister!" (one I specifically remember as I bit my sister Beth in 1978 because she was going to the drive-in with the neighbors and I wasn't old enough to go and was jealous so I bit her arm. I spent the evening with the taste of Zest soap in my mouth after my Mother made me chomp on a bar for breaking the no-biting-your-sister-rule)
So I guess my speech worked because Lily and Fiona went back to playing and Caelan perched at the doggie door to commence doorman duties. It then occurred to me after all this talk of loving your sister that I had not actually spoken to mine in a week after a little argument we had. I went and picked up the phone, the taste of Zest soap still strong in my memory.
Love your sisters. Don't bite them. My new credo, thanks to the setters.
*Playing even though Lily looks like Cujo.
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