Maulamute Advice
Well, I'm going ahead and writing here because it looks pretty certain (though not totally a done deal yet) that we will be getting an eight year old rescue Malamute Lady to keep our young (and overly active) elk hound company for his middle years.
The first introduction was done as advised by a friend who does dog rescue by walking them down the path together, wearing them both out and then letting them grrr at each other in his courtyard territory. By the end of it, she was falling asleep between grrrs (it was very cute, she's been a Mommy and lives with an alpha son). So we suspect that while we may have a few weeks doing slow introductions (she's very house trained, well lead trained and is at the age where sleeping in front of the fire is an attractive way to spend the afternoon); it looks like its going to work.
As soon as husband is back from Sweden (in about two weeks) we'll be taking her for a trial weekend and hopefully moving her in for longer periods until her person has to leave in August. We may speed things up if all adjustments go well.
She's never been around cats, but didn't seem overly interested and again we plan on the slow introduction (although one of the barn cats came up to say hi and she didn't really seem to care).
She's originally from the US, and has been in Ireland for a number of years. She had pups when she was about a year old and has always lived with her adult son, who another family is taking. We can't have two alpha males or we might have taken him too; but I haven't lived with serious Wolf-type dogs since I lived with the wolves in Denver in the 1980's and we had those from five weeks of age. Our elkhounds are wolf-dogs but their personalities are frozen at about six months of age and have been bred for thousands of years to love people and be big, fuzzy companions.
Though are male has been somewhat of a throwback and a bit wild, which is why we had him neutered and why we have been looking for a friend for him, since our older female died. We tried and eight year old elkhound bitch with him, but he just drove her crazy; which is why a dog 1/3 again his size seems like a good idea.
Anyway, that's sort of the situation; but since we've got a couple of weeks before "Princess" comes to live with us, I thought I'd ask if anyone else has experience with Maulamutes; and also if they have advice for the less experienced dog owner? I'm mostly a cat person, though I did get along well with the wolves and Princess reminded me of them a lot (especially the male wolf who we often called "great big lug"). She doesn't seem to have a nervous bone in her body, which I gather can be a problem with sled dogs. We have no children and she will be on a led or pen when they are around.
She is also crate trained so we are building her a den under the stairs near my husband's office. My guess is that she's going to pick a family member (wolves do) once she adjusts to being away from her current Mommy (that's going to be heartbreaking but there's no help for it).
Since she's older and slowly down, I don't imagine we'll need to chain her to logs or do some of the things I've seen sled dog owners do to keep them exercised and entertained, but again I'm open to any and all advice.
We don't expect the adjustment to be totally smooth and we don't expect the dogs to love each other right away; but anything I can do to make it easier is helpful. We started by sending each dog an old shirt with all the smells on them and they both sleep with their shirts, so that's another good sign.
I'm looking forward to this, though I feel very sorry for the young women who is having to give up her pets. She's having to leave the country and is moving first to Sweden, where they just are not an option. I'm not sure she could afford to take the back to the US, even if she was going there first. But I know she feels better about them going to good homes.
Princess visits our kitchen
expatriate Californian living in rural Ireland with husband, dogs, horses. garden and many, many cats