Dog-sitting Renni - finishing up 2021

After Christmas, we dog-sat a friend's dog for nearly 2 weeks.  'Renni' is a miniature golden doodle, and was 10 months old when we had him.  We all fell in love with this cute, friendly little guy who only weighs 9 pounds.  I also loved that he didn't shed :-)  Luckily, Snoopy tolerated Renni pretty well and did a good job pointedly ignoring the overly energetic puppy.  That did not stop Renni from trying to play with Snoopy, though he was never successful.  Renni seemed to like Nate best:

Renni adored the girls and me as well.  

I think Renni liked Nate and I so much because Renni could tell that we favored Snoopy and always made a point of petting Snoopy first. Snoopy also got more treats or at least got them first, since Renni's family doesn't give him treats (though he got some of Snoopy's treats anyway).  In other words, Renni was a little jealous of Snoopy, but Renni still ended up with more attention overall since Snoopy sleeps all day.  It felt fortuitous that Snoopy is deaf and couldn't hear everyone constantly cooing over Renni.

The only problem we ran into was that Renni did not like his own dog food and kept trying to steal Snoopy's.  Snoopy gets four pills at every meal for all of his health ailments, and we definitely did not want Renni getting old-dog medicine or his prescription dog food (formulated for kidney and heart failure).  And we didn't want Snoopy eating Renni's puppy chow that would be too high in protein for his failing kidneys.  Surprisingly, both dogs were friendly to each other if the other dog took some of their food.  Most dogs would growl if another dog takes their food, but neither of them minded at all.  It was Nate and I that did not want them swapping food/medicine.

I don't think Renni appreciated all the times Derek chased him, but Derek was mostly nice. 

Since Renni was only 10 months old, and was born out-of-state, when it snowed, Renni was in awe and loved the new sensations.  He reveled in seeing snow for the first time and liked to run in it.  The snow would matte in his curly fur though and needed to be picked out.  

I took the kids sledding on the hill behind their school.  There was barely enough snow, but some years we just don't get much snow, so we work with what he have.   The kids had a great time on the two hills. 

Renni definitely bore a striking resemblance to our Bloomingdale's teddy bear, both in hair color, texture, and overall size.  We had to take a few pictures of their similarities.

We had a great time with the sweet puppy and the kids were very sad when his family came home from vacation.