As promised I am now going to share Diesel's story. But Diesel's story really begins with Cerberus. Cerberus and I left a bad marriage together several years ago. He was a young dog at the time (about 5 years old). We moved back home to the Bay Area, CA from San Diego. It was me and Cerberus against the world making a big move and life transition with broken hearts.
There was never a question as to who would end up with Cerberus. Cerberus had been my dog from the start. I am the one who trained him, fed him, walked him, cuddled him, spent time with him, played with him, etc. My ex had no interest. He never even asked how Cerberus was doing after the separation. But the relevance here comes in that after such a huge monumental life change time sort of stood still for me. I seemed to forget that the years kept ticking by after. My life moved on. I recovered emotionally and moved on and started a new and better life. But somehow for me both Cerberus and I stayed frozen in time at that moment when we left.
People would ask how old he was and he was stuck at "Oh about 5 years old" for many years to come... It never occurred to me that he actually was aging. It seems an odd thing I know. But trauma is funny that way.
A little over a year ago a bunch of family members started adopting new puppies. And someone asked us if we were ever going to add a puppy. Sean and I had discussed this in length. "Oh yes. When Cerberus is in his last couple years of life.. When he is old we are going to add a puppy so that it will help keep him young and so he can be there to help train the puppy."
The family friend looked at us funny and asked how old he was now and I started to say "Oh about 5 years old". And Sean turns slowly and looks at me and says "Wait. Actually I think you have been giving that answer since we met... and it's been about 7 years now... maybe longer"
I blinked at him in confusion. "Huh?"
"Ya. What's his Birthday?"
I sat and thought and started to mentally calculate his age... and realized that my "young" dog was actually now an "old" dog. I looked at him with fresh eyes and noticed the grey hair and the fact that he is slowly going bald...
So after that realizing that Cerberus was nearly 14 years old (at that time) we suddenly realized that he was at "that" age. The age we said we would get a puppy at. It came sooner than we expected and we started looking and listening and watching and debating breeds and sizes, etc. He wanted a medium dog (no more than 40lbs) and I wanted a giant breed dog. He liked dacchunds and boxers. I liked mastiffs and rottweilers (and bull dogs). I also liked boxers so was certain that was what we would end up with since it was the one and only breed we were in agreement on.
And then we heard about a family that had an accidental litter of French mastiff/pit-mix puppies. Their male 9 month old french mastiff had gotten out and and mated with the neighbor's pit mix mutt. The neighbor foisted the puppies off on the owners of the french mastiff getting rid of them when they were too young to ween even (4 weeks old) and the family was desperately searching for homes for 12 puppies that needed 24/7 supervision and care. They had never expected to be saddled with a bunch of puppies and had no interest in dealing with it. They were giving the puppies away as quickly as they could. And Diesel was one of the last left.
Sean liked the idea that they were half pit/mix. He was okay with pits since they were on the smaller/medium size and was willing to overlook the mastiff half because of this. And I had no issues with pits and adored all mastiffs. So we agreed to go look. Originally I wanted the puppy that looked like the dad. He was traditional DDB coloring and oh so cute. But it was Diesel's personality that won us over. I did try to convince Sean that maybe just maybe it would be better to get both but that suggestion didn't go far at all.
And so we brought home a 4 week old Diesel over my Christmas holiday at work. And we didn't sleep for the next three weeks. We took shifts getting up every hour to be with the new puppy. We began training immediately (at home since he was too young for formal classes) and we spent every moment with him. I would fall asleep using his tiny little dog bed as a pillow on the floor until Sean would come wake me to go to bed and relieve me by taking a shift.
I'm not going to lie. It was rough in the beginning. But, it was also rewarding.
And I can tell you that yes getting Diesel did give Cerberus extra energy, extra happiness and it seems extra life. And yes Cerberus has helped train Diesel. He has been amazing with him. And I think that he kind of misses Diesel's early puppy stages. Because now every time we pass another little puppy at a store or on a walk Cerberus tugs and tries to go to the new baby puppy.
to be continued with more pics to come in a new post since I got cut off again.
