Ok I would like to thank everyone thus far for all of their input. I especially appreciate any responses that aren’t all doom and gloom, public shaming, finger wagging or scolding. In hindsight I probably wouldn’t do it again but my wife and daughter couldn’t make their minds up on a gender, let alone which puppy. I wasn’t much help, pretty much still wrapped up in my grief over the loss of my PERFECT Cane Corso; Gemma, a product of Zoe & Dom DeVita’s Italica program. Everybody convinced me that this would take my mind off of my sorrow and argued that there is no such thing as a “rebound” puppy. One thing is for certain, my mind has been occupied. Anyway the decision was made, for better or worse, and here we are; in for a penny, in for a pound.
OK, so here’s the update. My wife and I decided to split the pups for the lions share of the day and all night. This entails a bit of a separation for my wife and myself too. We are now keeping one pup in the main house and the other in the guest house (Insert shameless plug: PM me if interested in a Mastiff friendly 3BR 2 Bath short term rental in St Pete Beach). In addition to a small private yard, there is also a large common yard between them. Aside from the formal arranged daily time they spend together, inside and out, (depending on the weather), between 2-3 hour “visits”, they also bump into each other on potty runs, which for the most part was negating the purpose. Each pup spends 3 days in each location so no one dog gains “home rule”. My wife chose nights in the guest house and I have days. So we rotate between the pups and the places we interact with them.
Long story short, individually they are very well behaved (remember we are talking about 10+ week old puppies). We are able to more easily monitor each dogs food intake and there is a lot more napping going on, for both beast and man (fortunately we are retired). Today is the first day that we didn’t referee the Battle Royale. They chased, wrestled, bit, cried, slobbered each other for almost two hours straight. It actually occurred to us that although quite energetic, it was less violent fighting and more vigorous play. Eventually they took a rest, licked each other and napped for what felt like an eternity for them together, but was actually only 1/2 hour. It seems like we are putting in a lot of effort but based on what we are seeing I hope to be a reunited family soon.
If you saw the picture from my original post, the smaller female, Ava weighed in at 20lbs and the Male, Bruno, tipped the scales at 26 pounds. You would think Bruno has the advantage, and he does use his weight well, but he is hardly ready for the persistent flying leaps of little Ava. I don’t know if 20lbs is a runt at 10+ weeks or if 26lbs is a big pup either. I am just waiting for one or the other to make a statement and settle the dominance issue. I have also included a few more pictures as requested.
So please, keep the suggestions coming. Our vet recommends not taking the dogs out in public until the next set of shots, so although we do “walk” our pups on the property, we haven’t really been off the compound. We are looking forward to burning off a little of that youthful steam walking them around the neighborhood, socializing a bit and teaching them some good doggie manners. I truly believe that although we may be inconvenienced and have to put in a little harder work than normal now, we will reap the benefits of having two healthy pups growing up together in a harmonious household later.