[DesertChildAZ]

On Saturday, we brought 14-year old Tahoe and 1 year old Johnny Cash to the groomer. Their regular groomer wasn't working so two other female groomers groomed my dogs. They told me to come pick them up in 4 hours, as usual. After we picked them up 4 hours later and got them home, little Johnny Cash's behavior was odd. He was obsessively shadowing Tahoe, licking him and humping him! When we picked him up, Cash would not look us in the eye and would turn from left to right to find Tahoe over our shoulder. This went on all night. I thought maybe he was just anxious about the grooming and would be fine once we had a good night rest. He slept away from me, which is odd as he usually has to be right by my leg. The next morning he seemed better but not cured. It's been 5 days and he still obsessively licks Tahoe, constantly tries licking Tahoe's penis and follows Tahoe into the yard and waits while Tahoe pees so he can drink Tahoe's pee. It's very disturbing.

I have managed to out-train his dominance of humping and he's not doing that anymore, but I can't figure out how to keep him from licking Tahoe. He whines and cries if I separate him and Tahoe.

I'm also concerned about this behavior because Tahoe is starting to show signs of aging (arthritis, blinding, loss of hearing) and I fear how Tahoe's eventual death will affect Cash since he's so obsessed with Tahoe.

Does anyone here have any ideas how to resolve this problem and what could have caused it? I do know that when we picked up the dogs from the groomer, Cash was in a plexiglass case in the front room (he's never been enclosed in a closed case like that...a open cage, yes, but not an enclosed case like that) and Tahoe was in the back room. I also discovered later that Tahoe was nicked during his grooming session.

~ Kelly