Mountaineer Mastiffs

CoCo

CoCo - October 9th, 2006

Meet CoCo, "The Littlest Guardian".
CoCo is a rescue, part Chihuahua part Italian Greyhound. She's quite a fireball. She was 5 lbs and roughly 8 weeks old when we took her in, back in December of 2005. She's grown into a slightly larger dog than one might expect. She's now around 12 lbs and very leggy and tall.

CoCo is a lot of fun. She has meshed into her new family quite nicely. I'm having a lot of fun training her and the kids absolutely love her. She is quite the little guard dog. Protecting me from all sorts of things that she deems to be harmful - mainly strangers and bees.

She's very serious about it too. I'm accustomed to dealing with such large dogs and being guarded and "looked after" by such giants, and even my others who are far far larger than CoCo, that it's sometimes rather funny to see such a tiny little thing defend me with all she's got. She takes it seriously too. Strangers are not good, unless cleared by me first. And bees are a lot worse. What I find really interesting is that if she is near a bee outside and I am not with her, then she pays very little attention to it at all. But if the bee is inside, or if I am outside with her and a bee is nearby, WATCH OUT, because she will attack and kill the bee (very swiftly and efficiently) every single time. It's almost like she knows that I am allergic to bees and very afraid of getting stung again. But she did this from the first time a bee ever got near me when she was with me, it's not like she saw me be afraid of them or anything first. I think it is interesting. And even if they sting her in her mouth, she continues to go after them until they are dead. I think it's quite brave behavior for such a tiny little thing. So I refer to her as my littlest guardian.

CoCo ended up becoming quite the mother hen to Ava once I got Ava healthy and she was about to socialize with the other dogs. One of the funniest dog interactions you can see around here is when Ava torments Peggy to the point that Peggy finally WOOFs at her (in the stereotypical BIG mastiff WOOF), and no matter where she is Coco rushes in to protect her "baby" Ava from Peggy. Picture that for a moment. Peggy is a HUGE mastiff. Ava is at least 75 pounds. And Coco is 12 pounds. Yet Coco feels the need to rush to guard Ava. It is simply hilarious. I keep meaning to try to catch it on video sometime, but I always forget, or don't have my camera handy when it happens.

CoCo at 8 weeks and 5 lbs.

CoCo at nearly 1 year old and 12 lbs.