The Puppy is in the House

Sino ba yang naka-park sa labas ng bahay natin? Curiosity struck like a lightning when I saw an unknown black car parked at the front of our gate this evening. Suddenly, a familiar image went out of our home-- a thin Chinito boy wearing comfy clothes and greeting us. Yep, that's my cousin right there. Maybe he got something for my mom. I was right. It was a cute little Chow-chow, Doberman, and Askal hybrid puppy. Wow.

The puppy is a female dog about two months old. She has light brown fur and is called Miu-Miu for an unknown reason. Puppy, ikaw na ang Chinese! She was walking around our living room for the past few minutes before my arrival, trying to avoid our big Chinese Shar Pei 'Haley' who cannot seem to resist smelling Miu-Miu's butt. Miu-Miu was not comfortable with butt sniffling so the fight between the dogs started. 

Butt sniffling is a common dog behavior. I remembered having heard somewhere that butt sniffling is a form of greeting for dogs to get to know each other. However, butt sniffling does not always go well between dogs. In our case, Haley was quite tamed and fearful most of the time but for some reason she wanted to follow and smell Miu-Miu all the time. If I were a dog, I would also get irritated so it was quite understandable when Miu-Miu began to bark and put on a fighting stance. This led to my search for the whole meaning behind butt sniffling. According to an article on Psychology Today, butt sniffling can be described as a handshake between two dogs. It is a way for dogs to  get information about each other and make friends. However, unlike humans, dogs cannot categorize things such as friends thus they need to do butt sniffling every time they meet. They use 33% of their brain to process olfactory information which can help them recognize their breeder, and other social memories [See related article on Psychology Today]. 

Butt sniffling may also be referred to as an act of dominance. Based on an article by Shibashake, dogs are usually classified as dominant or submissive. Dominant dogs are those that would not back down in a fight and would tend to have an erratic behavior when scolded. They are quite aggressive and are usually the initiators of butt sniffling to get information from the other party. Two dominant dogs cannot be placed together. This might explain why our new puppy and our Chinese Shar Pei didn't get along during their first meeting. Nevertheless, I hope things will turn out well as time passes and our two dogs will learn to get along with each other.