Nana loves her grandkids. But while grandkids may get less excited to see their family with age, that’s not so with Teddy and Leo. Teddy and Leo “always get excited to see her,” Nana’s daughter Sanela Becovic told The Epoch Times. “Sometimes I do wonder if they’re her favorites.
“Teddy and Leo, I feel like they are number one sometimes.”
Teddy and Leo are not quite Nana’s grandkids, but they might as well be. They are Newfoundland dogs. Those are big, gentle giants with tons of fluffy fur all around their bodies. They usually exude calmness but can sometimes get boisterous, which can be overbearing. Yet around the very young, the sick, or older folks like Nana Ismet, 78, Teddy especially becomes calm.
“I always wanted to get one,” said Ms. Becovic, who now works in a library. “When life was pretty hard ... I needed something that would give me energy to go on.”
As you can imagine, Ms. Becovic was pretty timid when they first got Teddy. “It actually took a couple of weeks for me—or maybe two months. I was pretty scared,” she said. Surprisingly, she felt their love grow stronger day by day. “Then somehow all my fear for all dogs disappeared—just like that,” she said. “And when we got clear, I was not afraid at all anymore.”
Ginormous Teddy was just a 30-pound pup when he first played with Ismet. Now 6, he has grown to a whopping 165 pounds. “Are you sure you want one more big dog?” Ismet had asked Ms. Becovic. Yeah, she and her husband did. “We wanted Teddy to have a friend, a brother,” she said. “So, when Leo came, my mom fell in love once again, she’s like crazy about them.
“If she feels down sometimes or whatever, she comes here, she knows she'll feel better. ... That’s how they affect her.
“She comes to our place and she’s asking, ‘Where is Teddy and Leo?’”
And it’s no wonder the brothers love Nana. She has always been really, really kind and an animal lover. “She’s actually treating them like her grandchildren,” Ms. Becovic said, adding that their love is something very special. “They react really strong when she’s coming to us. If I just say her name, they go crazy.”
Tails raise and limbs trounce hither and back uncontrollably. “You can almost see smiles on their faces,” Ms. Becovic said. When they see her “they start pulling, they want to get to her really fast.
“They get really happy.”
Besides cuddling with Ismet, Teddy and Leo love walks by the seaside with their owner, doggy ice cream, and fantastic visits to northern Sweden.
Occasionally, Ms. Becovic regrets it when she doesn’t listen to her Nana. But not about getting Teddy and Leo. “I always listen to my heart,” she said. “I don’t always listen to my mom.
“This time I was happy I didn’t.”
