Tails of Popeye 1

In loving and joyous memory of my gentle Rottie - Popeye.

Gentle Rottie? A Rottweiler gentle? Heidi, have you used the wrong adjective?

Many Rottweiler owners will attest to this - they are truly a gentle breed with a heart of gold. You could trust them with your babies. There have been many tales of Rottweilers as superior baby-sitters. My Labradors were more boisterous and I would never trust Amber with anybody's babies. (Amber was the prime suspect in a case of two murdered kittens. We were out walking, she got excited over these two probably stray kittens gambolling by the side of the ditch, we restrained her and continued to a nearby field where we played ball. When we let her rest half an hour later and diverted our attentions to Popeye, she might have been out of our sight for awhile. I had forgotten about the kittens anyway. She evidently had not because on our way home later, I came upon the sad sight of the dead kittens.)

That aside, Amber cannot be trusted inside the house when the fragile bric-a-bracs have not been safely locked up or transferred to a higher place. Hell, even a mug of coffee on the coffee table is not safe. Coffee might end up on the floor courtesy of her exuberantly wagging tail. And when you scold her, she'd look at you with those liquid innocent eyes: "What? Who, me? What did I do?"

Labradors are rough and tumble dogs, good for rough play. Rottweilers, on the other hand, are sweet and gentle beasts. They only look formidable but are anything but.

Example #1: When I want to hand-feed Amber, I would put the treat on my open palm, lower the palm carefully while keeping a firm hold on Amber with my other hand. Let her see and understand the treat is on my palm - she can take the treat but not my hand. With Popeye, I can just give him the treat with my fingers and be very very certain he would never bite off my fingers accidentally. In fact, 9.9 times out of 10, he would drop the treat on the floor. Because his modus operandi when offered a treat was to stretch out his thick bull's neck (keeping his distance, respecting your comfort zone), open his huge powerful jaws (looks deceivingly vicious and is bigger than your whole palm, not just the two fingers holding the morsel of food) and gently close his teeth over the food without touching your fingers. Unfortunately his grip on the food is too gentle, so the food drops to the floor. Instead of bending straight away to pick up the food, he would look at you, first with gratitude for the favour, and then with a concerned "I didn't hurt your fingers, did I?" Fine and proper behavior when you're the sole dog in the household but when Amber came to stay, and you go through that rigmarole, when you look down for your treat, it's already halfway to being digested in Amber's stomach. But my darling Popeye would never look at you in remonstration. He would look all around himself, turning his considerable bulk right and left and all around, wondering where the food had bounced to. I can still remember the countless times when I'm in another part of the house and I hear, first, Kevin's chuckle, then, his frustrated "No! Grrrrrrr...No! Go away. Ugh!!!" And I would know that he has been feeding Popeye and Amber has been stealing it all.

Sharing the beanbag with Tony D

Example #2: Like all dogs, Popeye loved a good romp. A friend, Tony Dekkers was staying with us and his favorite form of exercise (for Popeye, not himself) was to pat his own chest and encourage Pops to jump up and touch Tony's chest with his paws. Popeye absolutely loved this game and he would really leap high. You could see the muscles in his back legs contract and ripple. Tony is a giant of a Dutch, topping 6' 5" and the height of his chest is higher than my total height. Yet when I play the same game with Pops, he had enough intelligence and inate gentleness to leap a small leap away from me and then pad forward on his hind legs to put his paws on my chest, grinning in delight. His baby leap would take him higher than me and just by standing on his hind legs, his paws are level with my chest. With Kevin, who is 6' 1" but not as broad across as Tony, he would leap but hold back a little on the putting paws on chest part. As further proof, I looked around for a shorter man who loved dogs and could stomach having a Rottweiler stand on him. My cousin Ichiro fits the bill and I could stand at the side and note how Popeye adjusted his leap to Ichiro's height but compensated by a more forceful thrust of his paws - because Ichiro is an ex-gymnast with a solid and compact chest and shoulders. Later on, I had another Labrador, Rascal, who also loved this game, but anybody shorter than 5'5" should never play it with him. You would get bowled over. No gentleness or care for his human playmates, so unlike my beloved Popeye.

Being bullied by Amber