Introducing Ollie

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.