Vaccum Cleaner

As you can tell, Ollie has a new job around the house which is more than happy to do. As Zach is learning to eat independently, Ollie likes to help clean up afterwards. Instead of the constant pleading, we just gave in.

Shame on you!

Oliver has been very sneaky. Since I'm home with the baby, there has been a confusion to who feeds Ollie in the AM and PM.
Usually it's my husband, but when he leaves really early, sometimes he doesn't get a chance to feed him. And Oliver has this internal clock that knows EXACTLY when it's 7AM or 7PM. It's actually quite amusing. He would usually come up to us, grunt then lead us to his bowl, or sit right by his bowl, grunts and sighs to let us know it's time to feed him. Since we've made a mistake and have fed him twice (once by each of us)we devised a plan on our board to indicate if Ollie's been fed. It only works when we BOTH participate.
Lately, I've just asked my husband if he's fed him because when I go out there and I'm not sure, usually I'll take Ollie's cues. Well, he has us trained so that every time he grunts or sighs around his bowl we think he needs to be fed. Tricky tricky!
He's tricked both of us several times and gets fed twice as much! No wonder this dog isn't losing weight! Oh Oliver! Shame on you!

Haircut

It's been quite hot in northern California so I decided Oliver needs his first hair cut. My friend suggested I get him shaved for the summer. She referred it as wearing a sweater in the middle of the heat. With that in mind I thought I would do Ollie and favor and help regulate his body temp. This is what we get.
What the heck happened to my dog?!?! Same personality but he looks like a LAB! Well, not even. It's like he morphed into a rhodesian ridgeback/wiemeranier/Labrador mix! He used to be considered a "red" golden but as you can see only his head is the red part. Poor thing is not loving his new look, but as soon as I took out the B-A-L-L, he forgot all about it. I just keep telling him it's just hair, it'll grow back.

Icky

Oliver went into the vet a couple of months ago because his ear infection has come back. It was kinda routine because all we really needed were antibiotics for the infection. While we were there, Oliver was weighed and to our surprise he has gained way too much!
When I first brought him home he was a skinny 65 pounds of fur. Now he's at his top weight of 100 pounds! Holy cow!
The doctor suggested the normal diet and exercise and to really watch his intake of food. Especially treats! We went home with the mentality that Ollie needed to go on a diet and exercise plan.
Doc started off cutting back his food amount. So Oliver went from four cups a day to three. A cup and half in the AM and same at night. What a mistake that was! Though Oliver started to loose some weight, he picked up a BAD habit!
One afternoon when Doc let him outside to do his business, doc found Oliver eating his own poo! So he was rubbing himself on it, instead he was eating it! We were horrified!
We figured out it was the cut back on food and that Ollie was just plain hungry. Obviously hungry enough to eat his food.....again! We've gone back to the regular schedule, but have added a little more exercising on our end. We've also leashed him when he does his business just in case he decided to go back to that habit.
No pictures were taken since I'm sure everyone can just imagine.

Play Time

Ollie is a butt-in-ski. As baby Zach is growing and developing, Ollie has made it his duty to be a part of it. When I have a free moment during the day, I'll usually bring out Zach's play mat to lay on and get some tummy time. Ollie likes to come over and sit right on top of the play mat. He sniffs around at all the dangle toys and gets right in my face to be sure and include him in the activity. Since Zach's toys have lots of bells and whistles(literally), this of course has Ollie ready for play time. Doc and I have been really careful about not confusing Ollie's toys with Zach's toys. We'll have to keep a sharp eye out just in case Ollie gets confused.

Big Brother

Oliver is now a big brother to little Zachary.

Zachary arrived on Feb 6th but didn't come home till a couple of days later. Meanwhile Ollie stayed with Grandma while Doc and I recovered from delivering little Zachary and made our way home from the hospital.
At first the meeting was a little tense since I was still recovering from the delivery and really wanted some rest. Oliver was quite inquisitive and sniffed out Zachary for a while. Checking out his car seat to all the other baby smells that came along.
Since Zachary's arrival, I've been so busy with him that unfortunately Ollie has been a bit neglected. Luckily, Doc has been fantastic at spending time with him.
So far, Oliver has been behaving well around little Zach and I'm going to try and spend more time with him. Hopefully once I'm completely healed from the delivery, I can take Oliver out for his favorite activity. A nice game of Fetch!

Ringing in the new year.

Ollie and I rang in the new year with nothing more than a quite house full of baked goods. Since I've been home with this pregnancy, Ollie had been by my side most of the day and I think he's loving it. Since this is my first pregnancy with Oliver, I'm getting a great sense of how he may be when the baby is born. My friends Stephanie and Hayden were in a similar predicament with bringing a baby into a doggy household and gave me a nice book to read and understand how best to train Ollie for our new arrival.
Being home with Ollie has given me such a deeper sense of how much I love him. He is truly a sweet soul and amazes me everyday with his little acts of doggyness. A couple of things I've started to pick up on is his habits of following me everywhere I go. Even when I hop in the shower, he'll follow me in and sit right outside of the shower stall till I'm finished.
He's developed this habit of sleeping on my side of the bed, blocking my way to the bathroom. Which in my case is every couple of hours in the middle of the night because of the pregnancy. I'm more worried I'll trip over him and land on my face in the dark!
Since my sleep schedule has been on the fritz as I finish up my last trimester. So when I wake up at 3am for my ice cream cravings or baby kicks, Oliver is right by my side out on the living room floor just hanging out.
One last thing I will never forget is the first time Ollie came up to my baby belly and got kicked in the chin from junior within. Before I ballooned up, Oliver would rest his chin on my stomach to get some attention or a scratch behind the ears. Well for the first time, he was kicked back and had the most puzzling look on his face! I giggled with laughter, but I'm sure he was not sharing the humor.
I wish my telepathy would kick in and I could understand what is going on in his little doggy mind. Does he know the changes that are happening? In our home? To my body? Does he sense the hints of baby powder and the baby gear that we bring in? I guess I'll never know.
For now, we take it one day at a time and I'm hoping to cherish every minute of it with this silly golden.

Alive and Kicking!

Many apologies to the Ollie fans out there that haven't seen a updated blog entry in quite some time. Life in our household has been more than busy and therefore Ollie's parent(mom) has neglected the postings.
So to catch you up so far... As of today, Ollie is now official not an orphan in our household. As of September, Mom and Dad are official and Ollie will be assured of his "first born" status in the house hold. Though Oliver could not be there because of the venue's rules of having dogs on premise, I made sure he was there in spirit and on some images.So now that Ollie can hold his head high and proclaim that his parents are happily married and his is the first and only child in our home. Of course that statement demands all the attention in the world since Doc and I wake to this face most mornings. Weekends especially. During the early weekday mornings, I'll be getting ready in our bedroom with the light on and this is the typical scene at 6:00AM. Ollie is NOT a morning dog. He will sleep till he's kicked out into the living room when I leave in the morning. Oliver prefers to wake at his leisure, or when ever he's hungry. Feeding time is usually at 7am.

Day at the beach.

I decided we were long over due for a family vacation, so I though a quick day trip to Carmel would be a lovely adventure. Carmel is a quaint little beach town that favors our four legged friend. They allow dogs to roam leash less on the beach and have hotels and restaurants that cater to them as well. They provide restroom facilites for all legged mammals!

Most store fronts had dog dishes with water for our furry friend. There were dogs all over!

It was a gorgeous day so we grabbed lunch at Forge in the Forest.

http://www.forgeintheforest.com/

Doc and I both got sandwiches and Ollie dined on his very own "Quarter Hounder". We got sit in the back patio with many other dogs and Ollie was behaving very well. There were a couple of moments of excitement with other dogs fighting over food, but generally everyone was really nice and calm.
After lunch we decided to head to Ocean beach to check out the crowd. Since the day was full of sunshine, there were plenty of folks out to see.

Ollie is always up to making new friends. With all the new butts to smell, he was having a great time!Playing a game of fetch is always a treat!

And tromping in the water to cool off makes for a smelly dog.

See you later, Alligator!

So three weeks have passed and Cosmo is ready to go home. At first we didn't know how Ollie would do with a new dog in the house. We were skeptical about his territorial behavior and possibly jealousy that would ensue. Of course the latter happened but in the whole scheme of things everything worked out.