There was a time, many years ago when we had a small dog (terrier-chihuahua mix) and large labs. When the doorbell would ring the dogs would all bark like crazy. The small dog would jump up and hit the door at about 5 ft high. With the combination of barking dogs and the thump of the door being rammed, the person on the other side would have no idea how many beasts were ready to pounce on them.

We could see out the peep-hole that often times the person on the other side was wide-eyed and had backed up, 10 ft from the door. What they didn’t know was that the little dog was the biggest threat. She wasn’t as loveable as the large dogs.

One time, a cable person came to install or adjust something (I really can’t remember). As he was tinkering behind the TV, this little dog sat and watched his every move. He asked me if she was going to bite him and I said, “I don’t know, I suggest no sudden moves”. What a great little guard dog she was. I was sure she wouldn’t bite him and would have felt awful if she did. What I did know was that there was no way he was going to get to close to me.

When this little dog was younger she wasn’t very friendly with strangers and did not like kids running and yelling. She was the second mom in the house. When my youngest son would run through the house, she would nip at his ankles to tell him to slow down.

She was also the boss of the labs. When they’d do something she didn’t want them doing (like playing too rough), she would nip their bottom lip (probably because at a quick jump that’s what she could reach). They would lay down and stop what they were doing.

When one of our labs had puppies, she wasn’t completely interested in attending to her pups like I believe most moms would. Our little dog again stepped in. Although she couldn’t feed them, she would be close by if they needed anything. She was very attentive to those nine puppies. At five weeks old, they were the same size as she was.

As she got older, she learned from the labs that the nicer you are, the more strangers will want to pet and give attention to you. Her name was Sugar, although Spice would have been more fitting. We had a cat named Spice that we had adopted as a kitten close to the time that we adopted Sugar as a sweet little ball of fluff.