"Oh," is for Olive! and she's looking for a family...

Olive is an optimist. Well, if dogs could be optimists, I'm sure she would be one. Never unhappy, always smiling, Olive is a sweetie. And I constantly find myself saying "Oh" when I'm around Olive. "Oh, you want to leap up onto the deck and bypass the stairs? OK then." "Oh, you prefer to sleep under your pretty crate bed?" "Oh, you figured out how to drag that giant stick through the gate to the puppy yard?" "Oh, you want to lay on the back of the sofa like a cat?"


As I mentioned in a previous post, Olive is never in one place for very long. She's not hyper, and she loves hanging out in her crate, or laying on a dog bed chewing her bone. But when she's active, she's not going to miss out on anything. Most of my Olive photos show a vibrant orange blur zipping through the photo. Or no blur at all because she's already gone before I can snap the photo!


I have made the decision to go ahead and place Olive and let her go to a family of her own, and she's eligible for a performance home, active companion home, or possibly a show home, depending on the circumstances. Most importantly, Olive is available to a home that will love her, laugh at her jokes, and give her plenty of snuggle time as well as long walks, or agility/herding lessons. She's smart as can be, and has been doing some puppy K work with clicker. It doesn't take Olive long to figure out exactly what she's got to do to get herself a cookie. She would love to learn a dogsport, or go hiking, walking, swimming with her special people.

While Olive is wonderful and outgoing and a dog I think has a really neat possible performance future ahead of her, I have to really weigh the family dynamics when deciding who stays and who gets to find a great family of their own. With the dogs I'm already actively training (or sometimes more appropriately the dogs I'm not training but should be), I don't feel like I could give Olive the training time to really bring out her potential and her vibrant personality. So, for someone who might not be interested in a tiny puppy, and instead prefers a puppy who is already well on the road to good behavior (housetraining, crate training, leash-pottying, leash walking, etc), and for someone who is not interested in middle of the night potty breaks, Olive might be the perfect, sleep through the night and never soil my crate girl. :-) I know I think she's pretty perfect, but I could be a bit biased!


Olive is very appropriate with adult dogs, and she likes to play with other puppies (as long as they are not slobbery shar-pei puppies trying to put her entire head in their mouths). You can see in the photo below, Olive is presenting herself to momma Bree for some puppy discipline. You can also see that we had an invasion of the green-footed aliens last night after I mowed down the prairie!



Happy, happy, green-footed girl crouching to leap out at her Uncle Gizzer when he wanders by!

Just snacking on some mulched grass, nom, nom.

Typical Olive Blurrrrrr photo, she's on the move!

Launching herself at her mother's feet. Just how Breezy envisioned motherhood! These two are so similiar in their silliness, it's quite entertaining to watch them play together.

Going UP! Olive loves the Aframe.

Stalling on the way down... thinking about how this activity *might* be more fun

If she ran back up the other way, back and forth.

And back again.

And, the never-ending, obligatory stacked photo at 5 months, so that it's included with the Olive post. She is looking a bit sway-backed in the photo, not surprising since she was not quite a willing participant. After all, Jon's house offers several acres that could be thoroughly investigated, but instead, we made Olive stand on the stooopid table.