Yesterday Bisou had a play date with her brother, Bear.
She and Bear were the largest puppies in the litter, and because Bear\’s owner Joanne (see her website here) and I are friends, we arranged lots of get-togethers for B&B when they were puppies, and they developed a strong bond.
In Bear\’s case this bond is made even stronger by the fact that he would like to have many, many puppies with Bisou. He doesn\’t care that if they did, the puppies would each have at least two heads. He doesn\’t care that Bisou was spayed three months ago. He firmly believes that, if he applies himself and stays focused, a miracle will happen and Bisou will conceive.
Thus, their play revolves around Bear\’s ceaseless attempts to mount his sister. This doesn\’t bother Bisou, who slithers out of his grasp and runs off as fast as she can, ears streaming in the wind. Eventually he catches her, maneuvers himself on top of her, she slides away and the chase begins all over again.
This goes on for–I have timed it–two solid hours, while we walk through the woods, stop by the stream, and drink iced tea, the dogs chasing, mounting and rushing in circles around our feet the entire time.
Eventually, the last quarter-hour or so, they slow down a bit, stand up on their hind legs, and wrestle as hard as they can (this is the interaction I have chosen to depict, below). Then Bear remembers, and the chase begins once more.
Bear is scheduled for neutering in the next few days. When he recovers, we\’ll get him and Bisou together again. I wonder how things will go then. I suspect that they may not change too radically–this kind of play has become part of B&B\’s history, and mounting behavior is not always sexually inspired.
What I hope will never change is the exuberance and good humor of their encounters–for their sake because they get such fun out of them, and for mine because they allow me to imagine, for a while, what a blast my life would be, if only I were a dog.