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A Tale of Three Wagging Tails

An English mastiff for your first dog? Yes, we went to visit a breeder in Maryland and, a few months later, drove home with a beautiful 18-pound, 8-week-old boy named Cedar Ridge Brother Cadfael (“Doggie” to his friends.) We’d read a lot about dogs in general and mastiffs in particular, and we ended up with a perfect doggie companion. Cadfael became a house dog who loves to take rides, go for walks at the beach or on the nature trail and sit by our outside table at a restaurant when we are eating lunch.

Fast-forward seven years. Cadfael is grey around the muzzle and we want to find him a buddy to give him a new lease on life. Our breeder’s girls weren’t producing puppies, so we needed to find another alternative. We already knew we wanted another mastiff! Fortunately, a friend who fosters rescue goldens advised us to check the web for rescue organizations for English mastiffs. That’s where we saw Molly, an older girl whose owner has started travelling more and more for work and wanted to find her beloved dog a home where folks were around more. (Molly’s owner had adopted her down in Florida; it looks like, from her matronly physique, that she had been used as breeding stock and then abandoned when she was too old to have more puppies.) We filled out the internet forms and were able to contact the rescue coordinator and Molly’s owner and set up a visit. What a little cutie (little as far as mastiffs go, anyhow), and she and Cadfael got along great! We were able to drive home with two mastiffs in the back of our RAV4!

 We were a little concerned about how Molly would adapt to new circumstances, mostly because of her failing sight. But she’s a little trooper. She’s already had obedience class and her housetraining is impeccable. She doesn’t cuddle up with the cats like Cadfael does, but she doesn’t have a problem with them, either. The most important thing for everyone to understand about Molly is that she is the top dog. Cadfael respects that, even though he outweighs her by a good fifty pounds. One of the sweetest things to watch is how he acts as a seeing eye dog for Molly, watching out for her. He will give up his dinner or even his cherished cow’s ear if she comes over and wants it. (We have to intervene at times, because he is just too much of a gentleman.)

So there we were with two older dogs and I was showing other folks at work the mastiff rescue website when I saw Gary’s picture. He had been found wandering loose in the woods and was rescued from a shelter. He was very, very thin, with tick and flea bites and other skin disorders because of nutritional issues and the insects. The foster mom who took care of Gary for several months worked a miracle: when we drove up with Molly and Cadfael to see him, he was a different dog from the sad, scrawny fellow in the website picture. He must have had a wonderful time with all the other dogs who were either owned or fostered by this wonderful woman! The three mastiffs clicked and we drove down the mountains with the back of the RAV4 filled with snoozing golden dogs.

Aubrey (as we renamed him, in honor of actor C. Aubrey Smith) is 150 pounds now with a 40-inch chest. Since he isn’t two yet, and still has plenty of growing to do, we suspect he is going to be bigger than Cadfael. He’s a good-natured boy who quickly learned our household routine and accepted Queen Molly’s benign (well, most of the time) despotism. Molly will lick Aubrey’s face and the three of them cuddle on their big doggie mattress with Mr. Lee and me in the evenings. Molly is really a little too elderly to go on the nature trail, so we took Aubrey and Cadfael and they sure did have a grand time together, splashing though the streams and galloping up and down the hills. Aubrey is just as smart as the other two mastiffs, and is doing very well with the obedience training Mr. Lee provides in the pen. (At first he was scared of the leash, and particularly of having his leash getting tangled in his legs. Wonder what memory that conjured up for him.) There is a school across the road with a sports center, so the boys can go over there for walks and to run after balls in the fenced-in playing fields.

 It’s great to have three big dogs snoring away in the bedroom at night, and to hear those tails thumping on the walls when you put your key in the door. We don’t mind drool and hair. We don’t mind lugging big sacks of dog food or shoveling up big mounds of dog manure. We do mind that mastiffs don’t live long compared with other dogs. That is our biggest regret.