In the mean time, Balto had been growing up.
He was similar in size to Kuma, with a slightly blockier body shape and the heavier coat of a husky.
As a result of scooter training, Kuma was now about 68 lbs of hard muscle, up 8 lbs from when first mentioned in this story.
Balto was about 65 lbs, also very well muscled.
Their similar size helped them to work together when pulling me on the scooter or previously when walking.
Imagine! Two unrelated pups, rescued from shelters in a random matter, that work almost like a matched pair!
We would find out later that trying to pair Kuma or Balto with a dog of very different body type and totally different movement style would be problematic.
Now we had our version of a pack structure in our home, with Kuma, Balto, Toto and later on Remy.
Kuma
Kuma was the senior dog under me, and would discipline Balto on occasion as adult dogs will do with pups.
Balto was 1 year old the first time he forcibly objected to Kuma’s discipline.
This was early for a pup to act like that and we were all surprised, most especially Kuma.
In our prior experience we had noticed that maturing dogs would often challenge the leadership structure at around 18 months of age.
So Balto was precocious by about a half year!
Balto was objecting more as he matured, and by age 2 it became clear that he wanted to be the head dog.
Now Kuma was objecting to Balto and we started having some “dominance” conflicts.
Balto was generally getting the upper hand, and finally Kuma got tired of being thrashed.
So, by the age of 2 1/2 years, Balto was the head dog. Fortunately this never affected their working together when pulling the scooter.
And their abilities while pulling the scooter just kept getting better and better.
Balto: Head Dog
I was doing less work than I had while walking.
Heck I was being carried everywhere we went on the scooter.
The scooter is what allowed the dogs to do so much more, and we were all loving it!
We also had greatly extended our range of operation.
No longer were we limited by my walking ability, even with the dogs assistance.
Now our operation was based on the dogs ability which was vastly greater than mine.
When I saw my first scooter online I had wondered if it might be an off road mobility option for me.
Since that became a reality, my actual experience with the dogs and scooter has been far better than I had originally hoped for!