Sadly, in April, we lost our sweet dog Sammy - he had cancer and was ~15 years old, and so when his quality of life degraded enough that keeping going would have been miserable for him, we had to say goodbye.
This left us with one dog, our German Shepherd Dog named Bandit. We knew he would be lonely since he's always had other dogs to keep him company, so when Sammy's health started to decline we began looking for a puppy. My brother in law picked out a boxer mix from a rescue in Texas who was coming to Washington in a few weeks for an adoption event anyways, and when the pupper bus arrived, he and my sister went to pick her up. Unfortunately, Sammy declined too fast to meet the new baby and had passed the week before, and Bandit had to spend that week with just his humans. Which, he loves his humans, but also, he needs his canine siblings.
We knew he'd be fine with a puppy, because unless they've been badly abused, German Shepherd Dogs are natural adorers and defenders of babies. The introduction went well - he accidentally scared her briefly by getting a little TOO enthusiastic about nibbling her ears in welcome but she recovered quickly from the startlement - and within a couple days we were comfortable leaving them alone together.
And now? Now they're best buddies. Bandit LOVES having a little sister, and she adores her big brother back. Sometimes she wears him out a little and he retreats into his crate to get some alone time, but mostly, he's overjoyed to have her. See, he's a snugglebug. He used to cuddle with our mastiff mix Jackson all the time, but Sammy wasn't as much of a cuddler, so once Jackson passed, Bandit wasn't getting his cuddle quota. And then we lost Sammy, and there were NO sibling snuggles.
This is no longer a problem! Adelaide, Addy for short, is ALL ABOUT the cuddles. She loves snuggling with her big brother, and he's so, so happy to have a cuddlebuddy again.
She's a wonderful pup. She's super sweet and clever, incredibly social, and very attentive to humans. She has made friends with the neighbour dogs and runs along the fence with them, but when you call her, she comes right away. We're all dearly attached to her already. And how could we not be? Look at that face!