An update on Ollivander Rutledge Dellinger

Yup, that’s right Ollie’s full name is Ollivander Rutledge Dellinger and YES I do call him by his full name when he does something bad.

Like peeing on my carpet.

Or stealing Jack’s plastic screwdriver and chewing the end of it so that it no longer screws or drives.

Or sneaking up on me when I’m using the bathroom and LICKING the side of my butt during my private twosie time.*

But let’s start at the beginning so that this update seems a bit more updaty.

image_2 Ollie joined our family on August 14th so as of today he’s been with us 7 weeks. When he first became a part of our family he was really, really shy and pretty much scared of everyone. We think that he had been abused (yelled at and hit) by a man in his original home because he was most fearful around men and would cower at any slightly raised voice.

He has warmed up to us over the past month and a half and likes me best. Yeah, that’s right I’M the top dog so he wants to be by my side at all times. While this is extremely flattering, it can also be a bit annoying (such as the bathroom intrusion). We’ve been working on him becoming closer with Travis so that when I leave the house Ollie doesn’t just whine and whine until I come home.

For the first couple weeks, there was a huge jealousy issue between Ollie and Jack.image_3 Jack was quite used to receiving ALL the attention in the house and couldn’t quite understand why we felt the need to even look over at the little dog. So, he did what any toddler would do and try to smack the crap out of Ollie when nobody was looking. As you can imagine, Ollie was NOT cool with that. He was also not cool with the fact that his new mommy was pushing him aside to play with a giant child who enjoyed smacking him. Thank god that phase passed and now they are fine with each other. Jack likes to GENTLY pet the dog and Ollie feels confident enough to jump up on my lap while I’m reading Jack his bedtime stories.

Ollie also decided to test my love for him about a month after he joined us by running away. When the nanny was over, Ollie slipped out the front door and our short life together flashed in front of my eyes while I was waiting to hear if he had been found.

It’s pretty obvious that Ollie is spoiled at our house. Partially because I feel bad that his last family didn’t love him much and partially because we just like to love the crap out of our dogs (and each other). I’ve taken the big step and whispered the words, “I love you” into Ollie’s over-sized ears, but my husband is still on the fence about declaring his love. I can honestly say that I don’t love Ollie as much as I loved Potter… but Potter was with me for almost 10 years so I’m assuming my love for Ollie will grow.

imageOh yeah, and he’s not totally housebroken. He does really, really well but still has had a few accidents in the house. Most recently, he decided to pee in our office and when I (admittedly stupidly) caught him mid-stream and yelled “NOOOOOoooooo!” he did a crazy startled peepee dance that resulted in me scrubbing the carpet in the office, the hallway and 4 of the steps going downstairs. I was definitely NOT loving Ollivander Rutledge Dellinger in that moment.

Ollie-isms:

Ollie’s Biggest Dislike is Baths – Ollie is apparently part cat because if you try to bathe him, he fights you like a rabid monkey ninja. The only way I can get him clean is by filling the sink up and then trying to throw as much water on him as possible before he climbs up my arms to catapult himself back across the room. It’s a thankless job, but it has to be done because otherwise he gets kind of stinky. And frankly, I already have ONE stinky boy in my bed with me at night.

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A typical weekday night: Jack has decided that he wants to sit on my boobie and Ollie is standing on my head.

Ollie’s Biggest LIKE is me – Yup, I’m Ollie’s jam. In Ollie’s ideal world I would wear him as a scarf and bring him with me wherever I go. That’s right… AS A SCARF. Because when Ollie is feeling the most excited to see me he pretty much would like to crawl up under my chin and stay there. I’ve also woken up in the middle of the night because Ollie has crawled up the back of my t-shirt. Let me just tell you, this is a very odd way to wake up because in your dream-state you have no idea what is happening and why there is a furry hot animal inside your shirt with you.

So there you go, a little Ollie update for y’all. He’s been with us for less than 2 months, so I’m sure that he’s just getting settled in. I’m hoping that he and Jack get closer (and maybe someday he can curl up in Jack’s bed instead of mine!!) and that he stops with having accidents in the house. Yup, that would be great if they could stop NOW because I’m kind of over it.

Do you have any Ollie-related questions? Have you ever adopted a shelter dog and realized that it would be happy pretty much living inside your skin?

*Ok, that’s not so much BAD as it’s weird and inappropriate.

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Wrap Up of This Week’s Randomness

I don’t have a real blog post for you lovelies today, just a couple random thoughts to share with you this wonderful Friday.

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I don’t want to post a picture of Jack from the playgroup, because there are other children in it. But check out this adorable picture of him modeling his “Believe” shirt from RayGun along with his new haircut. I just want to snuggle the crap out of this kid!

My Kid is Ridiculous
My mom took Jack to a library playgroup earlier this week so that he could interact with other kids his own age. Jack is STILL not fully walking on his own – he gets by holding onto things and likes to hold your hand while he walks around – but most of the other kids at the playgroup WERE walking.

So instead of crawling in front of his new homies, he devised a strategy to get from place to place while holding on to things. At one point there was an awesome John Deere ride-on toy just out of his reach, so he grabbed a kiddie shopping cart and used it to get to the new toy. So apparently nobody is the wiser that my giant child is still not walking. That’s my kid… smart AND a little bit lazy.

Starbucks Fail
Yesterday when I went to Starbucks my ham and cheese sandwich was missing the ham. What. The. Heck.

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No ham. No ham?! I mean, I ate it anyways… but really. No HAM?!

Probably Not the Best Idea
I passed this sign on my way into work today.

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Yup, that’s right, a sign for you to purchase some “parakeet Birds” (for a possible birthday gift) stuck in the ground on the side of the road in Baltimore.  I’m going to go ahead and say that buying someone a random bird from a sketchy dude (or dudette) probably isn’t the best way to procure a pet. That and is there a certain birthday that calls for a parakeet as a present? Like a wooden anniversary or golden birthday?

I’m in LOVE with this Shirt
image_1RayGun sent me this shirt (along with a few other adorable goodies like the shirt Jack is wearing above) and I’m in love with it.

Actually, this is the second shirt they sent me… the first one was a ladies version that fit skin-tight (not in a “oooh baby I’m ready to PARTY” way, but in an “ooooh girl, you need to cut back on the sweets and burgers” kind of way) so I asked if I could do a tradesies for one I’d actually wear. It’s incredibly soft, fits nice and I LOVE it. Love it, love it, love it! Thanks RayGun for pretty much being the best part of my week! I’m not even kidding when I say I’m going to wear this shirt pretty much nonstop for the foreseeable future.

Ollie: Lost, Found & Pooped
I received a call from my nanny one hour after I had gotten to work this morning that she had opened the front door (because she thought she heard the doorbell) and Ollie ran out. She tried to catch him, but that little guy is like a squirrel on crack when he gets going and before she knew it… he was gone. She called me and I tried to stay as calm as possible (when I actually wanted to rip her head off through the phone) and told her where the treats were and some tricks to get him. The plan was that she’d call me back in 10 minutes if she hasn’t found him and I’d leave work, drive the hour back home and start searching for him myself.

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Running from the law is very exhausting.

I lasted 3 minutes before I threw everything from my desk into my backpack and literally sprinted up the street to the parking garage. Mid-sprint, I got a call from her that she’d found him and gotten him back to the house. Where he immediately climbed up on the couch and fell asleep. The whole ordeal took about 20 minutes but I’m pretty sure that I’m going to grow a white streak in my hair like that chick from X-men.

So there’s my week in a nutshell. I guess this really is one of those TGIF kind of Friday’s. The weekend is looking up though with some girlie time with my BFF planned for Saturday and possibly a visit to the local Renaissance Festival planned for Sunday.

How about you, did you have any craziness happening this week? What are your plans for the weekend… anything fun?

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Introducing Ollie

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Here’s Ollie’s picture from his PetFinder listing. He may not have a Mohawk like Dobby did, but he totally has a beard.

When I last filled you in on our dog shelter saga, our adoption of Dobby had just fallen through due to him being shark-tastic and wanting to bite everyone.

Well, when I found Dobby I also happened to come across a cute little chihuahua/yorkie mix named Ollie. The only reason I didn’t call about Ollie first was that there wasn’t a lot of information about him in the listing.  I had no idea about his age, his size or even if he was housebroken. Also, I was concerned because Chihuahuas shed like crazy and the only way it would work for us is if the yorkie side won out with the low/no-shedding.

After Dobby fell through, I went ahead and emailed to find out more information on Ollie. According to Mary, the shelter director, he was around 1 or 2 years old, weighed 8 pounds, was 90% housebroken, and was very low shedding.

YAY! Or as my husband would say, “Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!”*

I submitted an application last Wednesday and waited. And waited. And waited. Until I heard this Tuesday that our application review was almost complete and the last step was talking to our reference. I had listed my bestie, Annie, as our reference and due to her job she’s hard to get on the phone during the day. The shelter contact was able to have her answer the questions by email though, which was fantastic. Annie is also fantastic – even more than fantastic –  because she spoke so highly of us that the shelter contact emailed me on Tuesday night that we were approved to adopt Ollie!

Which is when the anxiety set in.

My husband, who hardly ever goes out of town was leaving on Thursday morning for five days. Our choice was to either meet and bring Ollie home on Wednesday night before Travis left, or for me to do it alone on Friday while he’s gone. I really wanted Travis and Jack to meet Ollie with me, so we decided to schedule our meeting for last night.

When we walked up to the PetSmart where we were meeting Mary and Ollie, my heart was totally pounding like crazy. I wasn’t sure if I was going to pass out, hurl or poo myself. Maybe all three, so it is good that PetSmart has mess cleanup stations. Luckily I didn’t need to use one.

At first, Ollie was super shy and didn’t even want to come over to Travis or me. We bribed him with treats and he would slowly walk over, grab a treat and run away. Mary told us that he would take a while to warm up to us, so we really hung back and tried to be super patient. Over about an hour he got more and more friendly and even went up to Jack to softly take a treat out of his hand.

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This is Rutledge Wood from Top Gear (American version). I have a super crush on him and Ollie kind of looks like him. Picture Source: Rutledge Wood website

So, we decided to go for it.

I signed the paperwork, wrote a check and picked out a collar and ID tag for him. He’s gone by Ollie for 4 weeks, so we think we’re going to just stick with that as his name. Not totally sure yet, I might decide to change it this weekend – he doesn’t respond to Ollie at all. Current frontrunners are: Dobby, PJ (Potter, Jr) or Rutledge, with a middle name of Voldemort (aka the dog who must not be named).

As soon as we walked out of PetSmart with Ollie, I totally had a anxiety attack freak out. My stomach started lurching, my heart pounded and I burst into tears.

I just kept thinking…he’s not as cute as Potter! And he’s not as awesome as Potter! And what if I don’t love him?! And what if this is a HUGE mistake?

Travis calmed me down by reminding me that whatever we give Ollie will be better than what he would get from a shelter. And that we were already great doggie parents to him because we didn’t drop him off at an overcrowded shelter and walk away. We also have an out if we choose to use it – if we decide that Ollie is not a good fit with our family we can give him back within 30 days.

So, that pretty much kept me sane. I mean, between the weird crying jags.

Mary had told us to have Ollie ride back home with us (over an hour car ride) in his crate, because that would make him the most comfortable with the transition. I pretty much decided that she wasn’t the boss of me and switched him to my lap after about 15 minutes. Which he LOVED by the way.

The entire way home he snuggled up with me as if he had been with us for years. When we got home, Travis took him for a walk and then we let him sniff around the house for an hour or so.

Our intentions were to put him in his crate to sleep, which is what he did with his foster parent. So we said goodnight and put him in there with a treat. However, while I was taking out my contact lenses he started whining… and before I was even out of the bathroom Travis had Ollie in our bed.

So, yeah, Travis is already trained.

Ollie slept by our feet most of the night and every couple hours he would get up to explore the room. This, of course, woke me up because I was afraid he was going to pee on something, but he did really well with no accidents. By morning he was curled up right between Travis and me like a spoiled pup.

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Meet Ollie!

I dropped Jack off at my mom’s house this morning for babysitting and I’m working from home today so that Ollie can get used to his new home. So far he’s been alternating between following me around the house, sitting on my lap, or curling up by my feet under my blanket.

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Working from home is pretty awesome when you have a lapdog. (PS sorry about the lack of makeup, working from home doesn’t require makeup… or a shower… or real pants)

Oh, and he decided to pee on one of Jack’s toys. So that’s accident #1. Which is to be expected, but still sucks.

It’s nice having a dog around the house again. Even if he does keep farting. If he is this comfortable with me within 24 hours, I can only imagine he’ll be trying to sleep on top my face within a week. Which would be weird.

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Spoiled already? You betcha!

So to the person in West Virginia who decided that Ollie was not the right fit for them… thank you. Thank you for giving him up to a shelter, rather than just leaving him on the side of the road or sticking him in a dumpster. We are so happy for Ollie to join our family and plan to love him to the best of our ability.

*There is a country song out right now that says “winner winner” and “catfish dinner” so my husband was singing “winner winner chicken dinner” over and over and OVER again last night.

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