It has been highly entertaining to see the relationship between Cooper and Nikita evolve.
Cooper tends to treat Niki as a furry chew toy. Niki responds with ungodly yowling and squirming.
After repeatedly chastising Cooper for gnawing on his little sister, we realized that, as a Great Dane puppy, he is not that hard to get away from. Thus, either Niki is not that bright (yeah, right...), or this was some sort of elaborate interspecies game (and they really love each other).
As if to prove our point, the next time we saw Niki on the couch with Cooper, this is the scene which greeted us:
