We’ve known Sophia for almost 4 weeks now. We don’t feel that is long enough to make a recommendation for or against rehoming Sophia with other dogs.

We trust your ability to make that determination based on your own familiarity with dogs, dog training, her breed specifically, and your intuition when you (and your dogs) meet her.

That said, we will share these things that we have come to understand about Sophia:

• From the time of her purchase in 2018 at about 12 weeks old until sometime in late 2022, she lived with and adored a much older Chihuahua, named Micky. For the last 2 years she’s been the only pet at home.
• Currently, she lives with us, our 4-year-old PWD (Portuguese Water Dog), Frank, and our H3F (Hawaiian Feral Freeway Feline), Beans. In her interactions with our younger, smaller PWD, Sophia has behaved in a way consistent with a typical 7 yo GSD. They seem to have worked out a functional heirarchy. Initially, there was lots of “talk” but no violence (biting) between them. Now, they seek primarily to play with one another.
• When we’ve taken Sophia to local dog parks, so far, she:
  • Plays near (90%) and with (10%) Frank. Both have their favorite balls and aren’t really into the other’s stuff.
  • Looks around at other dogs but doesn’t engage them. You can see her interactions with other dogs in the video above. She is quite focused on playing fetch with us.

KEY

For us, the key trait that Sophia evidences in spades is biddability. In other words, even though we’ve not known her long enough to observe her with a wide variety of dogs, we have observed that she can be taught. Perhaps you’ll say, “Uh, duh,” when we share that, when introducing Sophia into our home, we made careful introductions and set appropriate safeguards until we were comfortable removing them. That’s how it worked for us and within 24 hours she was free to move about at will. Now, at almost 4 weeks with us, both our cat and dog treat her like a member of the family.

As with the question of rehoming with dogs, we haven’t known Sophia long enough to make a recommendation for or against rehoming Sophia with cats.

We trust your ability to make that determination based on your own familiarity with dogs & cats, your understanding of your cat(s), and your intuition when you (and your cat or cats) meet Sophia.

That said, we will share these things that we have come to understand about Sophia:

• She has shown intermittent interest in being near Beans, our 2-year-old, neutered, male cat, but he doesn’t feel the same at all. He typically avoids her. Sophia has not barked, growled, or displayed a prey drive toward Beans. For the most part, they ignore each other. When she tries to sniff him out, he runs away and she does NOT give chase.
• Often she whines when she sees Beans but it’s unclear to us why. She doesn’t seem afraid of him. Best Guess: she trying to tell Beans that she want to play with him.
• She and Beans routinely investigate one another nose-to-nose, but only when Beans permits it.
• When we visited a friend with a cat, the whole weekend the cat hid under a bed.

It appears that Sophia’s relationship to any cat is almost entirely determined by the individual cat.

KEY

Again, for us, the key trait that Sophia evidences in spades is biddability. In other words, even though we’ve not known her long enough to observe her with a wide variety of cats, we have observed that she can be taught. Perhaps you’ll say, “Uh, duh,” when we share that, when introducing Sophia into our home, we made careful introductions and set appropriate safeguards until we were comfortable removing them. That’s how it worked for us and within days she was free to move about at will. Now, at almost 4 weeks with us, both our cat and dog treat her like a member of the family.

We neither have children nor spend significant time with any children so we won’t make a recommendation for or against rehoming Sophia with children.

We trust your ability to make that determination based on your own familiarity with dogs, dog training, her breed specifically, and your intuition when you meet her, hopefully with your children.

That said, we will share these things that we have come to understand about Sophia:

• John’s older brother has children and he has not reported any issues with Sophia and his children.
• We have observed Sophia with one school-age child who fed her treats at an outdoor event. Sophia was great with that child.
• We have observed Sophia with two infants.
  • One baby girl started crying the moment she saw Sophia. Her mother explained that she was afraid of all dogs. The crying infant didn’t seem to phase Sophia at all.
  • One baby boy sitting in his mother’s arms, his sock dangling off his foot. Sophia tried to pull off the sock. She missed and the baby didn’t see her attempt. However, when his mom turned around and he saw Sophia, he started crying.

With a sample size of only 2, we’d have to conclude that Sophia is unphased by infants, but infants are afraid of how Sophia looks. However, two is not a big enough sample size to draw any legit conclusions.

Yes. Two.

RIDING IN CARS SPINS HER UP. We’ve heard that some dogs get overstimulated by car rides, and our observation is that Sophia takes it up a notch.

Is there a ‘hack’ for preventing the spin up? Yes. Through trial and error, we have determined that if Sophia is crated and the crate covered with a blanket, she doesn’t spin up. Apparently the entire spaz-out is caused by visual overstimulation, not the feelings of acceleration/desceleration, not the sounds of being in a car on the road, not anything else.

We’ve not had her long enough yet, but our plan is to acclimate her to riding in cars in her covered crate and experiment with slowly removing the blanket to reveal larger and larger parts of the world going by. The hope is that she can re-learn how to think about what she sees out the windows when a car is in motion.

SHE DOESN’T LIKE ‘MESSY MEN.’ We understand that the description we’re about to offer sounds insensitive but here it is anyway. When we say ‘messy men’ we are describing human males (not females, yet) that Sophia has encountered a few times on the urban streets of Portland with us. A ‘messy man’ is one with characteristics often associated with the unhoused, alcohol & drug overuse disorders, and/or severe psychological disorders, such as schizophrenia. Let stereotypes guide your imagination and you should have a fairly accurate idea what he looks like. Sophia will sometimes bark to random people as if to say, “Hi. I’m Sophia. See me here? I’m looking at you.”  BUT, with ‘messy men,’ Sophia’s bark is not to but at them. It is characteristically different and seems to say, “You! Stay back! You’re not welcome here with us!”  The bark is not rabid; it is directed, forceful, and commanding.

In addition to everything else we’ve shared on this web page, we feel Sophia has been a dream foster so far. We wish we had the resources to adopt her ourselves. Sophia is people-focused. We have NOT seen a prey-drive in her toward anything yet. We’ve observed her in the presence of birds (wild, not pet birds), cats, dogs of various sizes, chickens, raccoons, and squirrels. She’s shown genuine curiosity in our cat and the raccoons, but nothing that approaches a prey-drive.

As should be expected of her GSD hardwiring, Sophia instinctively demonstrates dominance over Frank, who is 50 pounds (soaking wet) to her 80+ lbs. She does weird stuff like lifting Frank’s back legs off the ground with her head or looming like the Leaning Tower of Pisa over him. However, it’s never violent, even when Frank loudly protests. Does Frank like being dominated by a guest in his own house? No. However, we’re quick to intervene and disabuse Sophia of any notion that she needs to control anyone but herself here. She’s VERY smart and quickly got on board with the truth that the humans here are Alpha. [If you’ve never had a dog, much less a GSD, you’ll wanna bone up on the rules of being a human Alpha.] Sophia seems much more relaxed, content, and happy knowing that the Alpha duties are vested reliably in the people here. Nowadays, when indoors, both dogs do their own things. When we head outside, they behave like lifelong buddies or mother & son, sniffing the same stuff, looking at the same stuff, walking side by side despite having leashes that are different lengths. It’s charming.

The objective details in the “About Me” story at the top of the page are true of Sophia’s history, i.e., she was born in New Hampshire, raised with a Chihuahua, etc.

We have no proof of the following three things but we’ve started to suspect that:

• Sophia’s a “Daddy’s Girl,” especially if daddy wears a beard. (John was a man with a beard.) Luckily, she likes everyone we’ve introduced her to, male & female.
• She can assess a group of people and rank them in order of her preference almost instantaneously. She’s not shy about picking her favorites in any gathering of people and buddying up to those at the top of her leaderboard.
• She’s been encouraged to beg at and eat from the dinner table. For the first couple days we tried to feed her just the kibble she came with. She barely ate. Maybe it was heartbreak at the death of John, maybe she prefers John’s chicken nugs to kibble. Whatever the reason, we’ve got her eating healthy now and are teaching her not to beg at the table.

Sophia is a hugger. She seems to understand that she’s too big to be a lap dog but she wants to be near people, touching people, and being petted by people whenever people are around. Expect her to a) press her face firmly against yours, b) pull you close with her chin over your shoulder if you’re down at her level, and c) scoop up your forearm with her nose to encourage you to pet her. Good luck showing her more affection than she’ll show you.

Sophia isn’t motivated by dog treats. Sometimes she won’t take the treats we offer. Sometimes, she accepts them then quietly turns and drops them. It’s arrestingly polite and hilarious. She might be motivated by table scraps but we aren’t testing that here. She’s definitely motivated by attention/affection.

She is very careful with her mouth around people. She won’t jump up on people, even when we’ve encouraged her to. (We tested it once or twice but are satisfied that it isn’t part of her lifestyle so we’ve stopped asking her to do it.)

She responds best to a firm “dad voice” (and presumably “mom voice”) when given commands. So far, we’ve found that she knows the verbal commands: COME, SIT, STAY, DOWN, DROP, OFF, STOP, COUCH, and NO. She also responds to the physical signs for: SIT, STAY, and anything you point your finger at as the direction or location desired.

She’s not much of a barker but she’s not barkless. When she hears people at our apartment door or a neighbor’s door, she will bark in a one-bark-at-a-time fashion. We say, “OK, SOPHIA” or “SOPHIA, THANK YOU,” to let her know we heard her and she can stop barking. When that doesn’t stop her, we say, “NO,” following each subsequent bark until she stops. So far she typically barks 3 times before she can stop herself. Not more, not less, and never in runs of non-stop barking. (Exception: see “Riding in Cars” above.)

Portland, Oregon. If you are familiar, we’re on the inner upper east side.