A Bairre Update

Bairre is now a little over ten months old, and his personality is developing further. It’s fascinating to see who he is becoming, and I am finding that he seems to be a fairly unusual Great Pyrenees.

Mainly, so far, he seems to be a city boy who doesn’t like bugs, like in a big way. He seems to have been traumatized by having a few ticks on him, so he avoids tall grass and doesn’t seem to like outside in general. He also had a bad mosquito bite on his nose that really seemed to bother him. Bairre is very sensitive to everything. He’s still a baby, of course, but I am surprised that he seems to have little to no interest in helping Boudica work. I think it’s because he prefers not to be outside right now.

Instead, we have discovered he loves to hang out in the air-conditioned music room as much as he can. It’s been very hot, and we do not have air conditioning. It’s pretty miserable, of course, but we are generally against air conditioning if you can at all help it. Well, Ron is, and I agree in principal. Still, we have some cellos (or celli) that have to have some humidity and temperature control, so we have a little window unit air conditioner in the music room. Bairre never wants to leave the music room. Oh, I take that back, today, he heard me giving Boudica a treat, wanted out, and then barked to get back into the music room.

He’s also still very, very sweet. He still wakes us up every single morning with kisses. It’s like he loves us so much and is so happy to see us in the morning. It’s especially great that Boudica has kind of joined in this morning routine, even though she’s not much of a kisser. So every single morning Ron and I wake up to Great Pyrenees kisses.

But here’s the most unusual thing about Bairre, I think.. We have been having trouble getting him to eat. Pyrenees are notoriously picky eaters. Our son described it well: Most dogs are just grateful for kibble. Pyrenees say “Oh, grilled steak two nights in a row? No thank you.”

It’s true. I have never seen anything like this, and normally, it’s not a worry but when they are puppies, you worry a little about them getting enough nutrition. Well, we worry. Well, mostly Ron worries. He worries a lot. Bairre is definitely his baby–though I should add that Biarre has been somewhat of a mama’s baby of late. Anyway, we found out that Bairre doesn’t like to eat in a dog bowl. We wash it every day, and it’s really just a large glass storage bowl, but it’s the “dog” bowl to him–he doesn’t like that.

He wants to eat on a plate like us. So we put his food on a plate now, and he eats it. Bairre is that dog. It’s going to be very interesting to see how he develops as a personality. Ron has been teaching him everything he can. It’s a adorable.

Oh, and one more adorable story. This afternoon, I was working on some students’ dissertations on the couch, and Ron came through living room asking for soft strawberries. I told him I had a bowl in the fridge for jam, so they would be soft. He came back through the house with a handful of berries. They were for Lucy.

“Lucy likes when I feed her strawberries,” he said. “She likes it best if you hold them for her.”

Ron loves Lucy too. He’s going to be pretty broken up when she passes.