Maisha

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• Species:
  Dog
• Birth Place:
  Hungarian Shelter

17.05.2010
Maisha is our cuddle-dog and very sensitive. He is very attached to us and although he also enjoys wrestling with the other dogs, he also loves curling up next to his brother on a pillow. Maisha likes to stay close to his brother Kilio, no matter if we are going for a walk or if a stranger or a big dog comes, he hides behind his brother and relies on him to protect him from the world. He tries to avoid conflicts and depends on us humans or Kilio to take care of everything. He likes to work but he can be very stubborn. While working with the touch screen, he has to choose between two shapes, a square and a circle, and he will sometimes keep choosing the square even though it is wrong and he is not getting reinforced for it. Other days he picks the circle and also stays with it throughout the whole session, gets reinforced and a great score on the test, but then the next day he goes for the square again and does not take help from the trainer trying to point the right shape to him. He will hopefully figure out that he should pick the shape that gets him a reward, not the one that looks good to him that day!

Actually Maisha should have been named „Struppi“, since his wired fur wildly projects in all directions. This little brown-haired guy is not only charming because of his round, fuzzy physique but also because of his cute, black round eyes, which both are covered by a black stripe of fur.

Maisha is much smaller than his brother Kilio but is not inferior at all if it comes up to challenge the big pups to a play. Especially Alika and Rafiki he seems to be fond of. Regularly he confidently is stomping towards one of the two and starts a wild scuffle by biting especially Rafiki into the hind legs or into the tail.

But since he is that small compared to the others, he often is rolled over downright and one has to free him frequently from this position. Since he has found out in the meanwhile that “human being” helpfully lends him one’s support, he comes running immediately when playing with the others impends to get too rough.

Also Maisha belongs to those puppies that are especially attached to the human being. Above all this comes out during night when it gets around to sleeping.

Maishas’ preferred position is that one to put his head onto the throat of “his” human. However, prior to that he always tries to crawl into ones sleeping bag to find – as close as possible to the body – a suitable spot to sleep. If one is shortly leaving ones place to prepare for example the milk bottle for the pups, one can be sure that Maisha is exactly locating himself on that place, where one was sitting or lying two minutes ago.

But since he is throwing this lovely asking look against one if you start explaining to him that he can’t stay lying there, you can’t be angry at him at all and thus, you comfortably try to nestle together again.