My mom’s little buddy (Spike, the white one) came to stay with us this week while she’s on the first unmarried vacation of her life. It’s been interesting. 
On the positive side, Spike’s usually pretty cheerful… tail wagging, happy to see you, all that good stuff. And he’s fairly low maintenance. Cute, too.
On the negative, he has the unfortunate luck to be both less-than-bright and stubborn. It took him a week to learn how to walk up the ramp that leads to our back door, for example, a task that our dog mastered on his second try.
But the real issue is my dad. Dear old Pa treated Spike like shit as a puppy, constantly picking on him and doing his best to antagonize the little guy. The result is that Spikey doesn’t like to be picked up, ordered around, or most of the other things that a small dog in a small house must endure on a daily basis. He’ll snap and snarl, reacting as if he were being harrassed by my dad.
It’s sad that shoddy treatment early has made it so difficult for him as he’s gotten older, because in most ways, he’s a really great dog.