Best Friends

Azuki likes to play. A lot. She likes to play fetch with her toys, shake the snout out of them, and wrestle her snuggle puppy to the ground. She likes playing with people, especially if you have toys in your hands. However, her favorite thing in the whole wide world is still playing with other puppies.

Azuki is an enthusiastic puppy. "Playing" for Azuki is more like "attacking". She likes to attack her opponents/playmates by jumping on them with her front legs, running into them, biting their ears, their snout, or anything she can get her teeth on. If her playmates are too slow for her or showing any reluctance to play with her, she will bark at them in her playbow position, with her small butt perched high up in the air. When I first saw this, I thought she was an aggressive puppy who wants to eat other puppies for lunch. The one time I watched the puppy play session at her school, she had to be stopped 3 times in the 10 minutes I was there for a brief "cool-down" because she was so crazy! Mind you, she was the ONLY puppy who needed any time-out. I thought for sure that the puppy kindergarden would kick her out in order to protect the safety of their other pupils, but surprisingly, I was told that But she is merely a VERY playful puppies who loves to play.


Azuki will play with pretty much anyone who will play with her. But her BBF before she moved away with her owner was Toffee, an apricot colored toy poodle with a sweet temperament. Toffee is a people dog, prefering the companionship of humans rather than dogs. She also does not have the stamina of a stallion, like Azuki. So understandably, although Azuki LOVES Toffee to a million pieces, Toffee doesn't always return such affections.

When Azuki was only 2-3 months old, Toffee was still bigger than her (two months older), so Toffee was physically able to defend herself as needed. Usually, Toffee would just sit quietly by her humans, LIKE HOW A DOG SHOULD, casting incredulous and sometimes disgusted looks at the ANIMAL ripping around her, hoping Azuki will just GO AWAY ALREADY. But one time, when my friend Vera came over with Toffee to hang out, Toffee decided that she just had enough of her sneak attacks, and decided to even the score. We personally witnessed the sweetest little dog just lose it, POUNDING Azuki to the ground, pinning her down and growling at her like a lion, lifting her paw periodically only to bitch slap Azuki into submission.

Needless to say, both Vera and I were too amused to rescue my down and under pup. Plus, the dog deserved a good beating. She had it coming.

Very soon Azuki would grow at an exponential speed, becoming a gangly but strong teenager, who would out-run, out-wrestle the gentle Toffee in no time. But I will never forget the day that Toffee stood up for herself and showed Azuki who is the boss!

I am posting pictures of Toffee and Azuki having a ball climbing over Vera (when they took a break from fighting). And Azuki's playing with her toy.