Enough about chickens! Let’s move on to introducing our second canine family member, Abby!
Abby is also known as Abbylicious, Little Bit and more often, Goober. She is a hyper and adorable 2-year-old Cane Corso. She is about 85 pounds of running joy! If you haven’t heard of a Cane Corso, you are not alone. I always had dogs growing up (miniature Schnauzer) and my dad had a pet supply store. So, I knew a lot of breeds and saw a lot of dogs. But, Cane Corso? I had never heard of it until the Hubs decided he wanted more of a protection dog for the homestead and after much research, we came up with the Cane Corso. Cane Corso dogs are a cousin of the Mastiff but more muscular and are fiercely protective and extremely loyal. They were used as war dogs by the Romans. If you look them up, they have some crazy scary pictures of them on the internet. We found a breeder in Kingsport, TN and picked her out of a litter of 16. She is actually quite a bit smaller than her parents who were 112 and 125 pounds. Mama was the 112 pound black and daddy was the 125 pound brindle. So, Miss Goober is mostly black with a white patch on her chest and “highlights” as we like to call them of brindle. We chose not to crop her ears, so she has a really cute face and looks a lot like a lab.
The introduction with Jake was less than stellar, at least as far as Jake was concerned! He had been the “lone wolf” for about 4 years and was in no mood for a puppy. She tried and tried and tried to get him to play with her and he just wanted nothing to do with it. She would aggravate the daylights out of him constantly. Once we moved to the homestead and she had 3 acres to run on and play on and explore, she would leave him alone for about 30 minutes a day. She is an amazingly energetic dog and her motto is “why walk when you can run”. She runs everywhere! She loves the chickens, too. Well, she loves to run at them and get them to scatter. When she is not running around, she wants to be right by your side. At all times. If you get up off the couch to get some water in the kitchen, she follows you. You can go nowhere without her! She is also loves to snuggle. She loves to curl up next to you or on you (especially if there is a blanket on you) and fall asleep and snore. Oh, and she sleeps with her mouth open and her tongue out too. Abby loves to bring you a bone whenever you come into the room. If she doesn’t happen to have one near her, she will run to the toy box and get one out and bring it to you. Not that she wants to give it to you, she just wants you to see that she has it and has brought it to you and maybe, just maybe, you will play with her and try to take the bone. She loves to be chased and she looks like a Gazelle when she jumps and takes her flying leaps! She is one happy dog!
Abby and Jake were together for about 11 months before we got Abby’s sister in December of 2013. Jake learned to tolerate Abby and once in a while would pay attention to her. Once we got Abby’s sister, Jake was a happier dog! But, that is a story for Canine family, part 3!
