About two weeks ago I was really upset and a little angry with Galen for not being Snarky. Silly, no? I miss Snarky's snout bumps, the way he would pretzel around and between my legs when he was happy to see me, the way he sneezed when he thought I had made a good doggy joke. Galen just eats inordinate amounts of food, pees on my floors, and barks when he isn't getting what he wants. He doesn't love me the way Snarky loved me. My conscience obviously then turned itself on and told me to stop being an idiot. Galen is a baby, and it took many years for my relationship with Snarky to develop.
I'm my opinion there's a difference between neediness and affection. Neediness has no thought to it. Pogo was a very needy little puppy. He would cry and wail and carry on if we were any distance from him. I have many memories of driving somewhere with him shrieking from the back seat. Snarky was even worse. I think he would have developed full blown separation anxiety if he hadn't had Pogo and if we hadn't set them up with a very consistent routine. Even so, I wouldn't say that this fear of being alone was love. It was just neediness.
It took a long time for this neediness to shift over to something I'd call real affection. We would see glimpses of it early on: stopping in the middle of play to glance over at us, flopping on the floor near us instead of anywhere in the house, tail wags when we came home. For Pogo I'd say the real change came when I enrolled him in an obedience class. He discovered he really liked to work. Partnering with me grew out of it. Then my job started demanding longer hours, so he switched his affection to my husband. Pogo's perfect partner must be willing to play fetch or train him for hours, and I just wasn't putting out. Snarky was more of a cuddler, so he moved in on me when Pogo switched. Not being a worker, he was happy to lie on my bed for hours as I did computer work.
After I recovered from the little "my favorite dog is dead" self pity party, I reconsidered my interactions with Galen. He isn't as needy as either Pogo or Snarky. He gets angry, not scared, when I leave him alone. Yet, I'm seeing the same early glimpses of bonding I saw with them. He was spinning in delight after I praised him lavishly for solving a hard training problem. He runs over to me after his morning pee with an expression of, "I'm ready now, what's next?" While playing fetch he hurtles a six inch French drain like a horse leaping a water hazard in the Olympics, and I laugh at the joy he gets from showing off.