Olive Oso

About Olive.

Who is Olive?

On Sunday, April 1, Greg and I decided to get a puppy. Her name is Olive. This is how the story goes…

For about a month we had been talking about getting some sort of animal. I am a cat person. I’ve always had cats and I was pretty sure that my first animal outside of my childhood home would be a cat. I’ve had this planned for most of my life. Greg, however, is not a cat person. I think he would get a cat for me, but I know he is more of a dog person. I haven’t been a dog person until my step-father, Paul, brought his dog Mia to live with us. Mia is a great dog; she’s smart, playful, and loving. She’s also a Yorkie. So after I saw that dogs and cats are both great, I became a dog/cat person. But I decided that if I ever got a dog, it would be a big dog.

We’ve visited the Humane Society several times…just to look. Never to really adopt, but to get an idea and an itch (itch to buy, not fleas). But last Saturday, we were at Half Price Books selling books and across the street was PetSmart. So we took a field trip over there and I told Greg that we should go back to the Humane Society and look at the pets there. So we did. And we talked all about “what if we got a dog,” “how would we take care of it,” “where would it stay,” “what are the costs,” “vet bills,” “outside time,” etc etc. We saw a lot of puppies and dogs and now that I think about it, my heart just breaks. I know that it might be better than out on the street, but those cages! After seeing Olive run and hop around I am so glad that she is out.

Greg said no on Saturday. But Sunday morning rolls around and we find ourselves talking about getting a puppy again. He says “but it’ll have puppy breath” and my heart just melted. I remembered a reddish, pudgy, freckly dog that was next to a very rambunctious dog. The red dog was the dog I wanted. So we went back to the Humane Society and ended up adopting the red dog. We weren’t able to take her home yet because she still had to be spayed. But 2 hours later the lady called and said that our dog had a cold and if we wanted, we could take her home now and then get her spayed in about 3 weeks…or get another dog. I couldn’t imagine getting another dog just because ours was sick. So we went back and got our dog. We had decided, at the time, to name her Rosie. We went to PetSmart to get her all kinds of puppy things and on the way out we noticed that her eyes were olive coloured, so we then changed her name to Olive. Which fits her. She is a great Olive dog.

The past few days with Olive have been exhausting but fantastic. I have really enjoyed being with her and playing with her and trying to house-train her and feeding her and letting her chew on me. She is 2 months and now 10 days. She is teething. She is not house-trained. She has tons of energy but she also sleeps a lot. She loves to run in the grass and roll around in it. She loves to sleep near me, but not next to me. She likes her soft food heated and she prefers the hard treats over the soft treats. Her favourite toys are my blue head band, an old rag, a dingo, and a sock.

She is a German Shepard/Catahoula Leopard mix. She is reddish, slightly pudgy, big feet, floppy ears, olive eyes, with spots (freckles) on her nose. She’s adorable.

I have never felt like a celebrity more than I do now. Everywhere I bring her it’s “awwww a puppy, can I pet her? What’s her name? what type of dog is she?” everywhere. We sit outside at starbucks a lot and people will flock around her continually. Once we went to the park and about six children spent 20 minutes playing with her. We are (she is) a people magnet.
What can I say? We have a cute dog.

-Ericka



I Love our new puppy Olive. At first I was very apprehensive about getting a puppy. There quite a responsibility. Yet, when I was young I had always wished to have a lot of big dogs. I got really into all the different kinds of dog breeds. I would go to the library and check out dog breed books. Thus, I knew deep down that I really wanted a dog even though they have to be trained and taken care of. I took a lot of time thinking about all the implications of getting a dog at this time in my life and almost thought myself out of going through with it. Enter Ericka. One of the many reasons that I love Ericka is her ability to know what she wants and go after it. She convinced me that between the two of us, we could take good care of a puppy. She really helped me to feel better about going through with it and now I am thankful for that. Now I have something I have wanted for a long time and it is working out just fine.

-Greg


PS. We got new meds for Olive’s cold- I think they are working. We took her to the park today and she just loved running around and exploring the grass and eating everything that she shouldn’t.

Pic-shores.

olive on the first day home!

olive at the park

myself and the puppy.

biting greg.

more biting greg.

lovey!