This whole bit starts about 9 months ago when we decided the timing was finally right to add a dog to our nutty family of two rabbits. We had moved into a new house with a great fenced in yard. We both were running more than ever, having just finished marathons. I was getting ready to finish my PhD and my schedule would be flexible over the next year. About a year and a half ago we learned about German Shorthaired Pointers, or GSPs, and felt blessed to find a dog that fit all of our wants/needs in a breed in such a gorgeous dog! So now the hunt was on to find a puppy from a great breeder that bred in the home rather than in a kennel. I hunted high and low across the web and low and behold - there was such a breeder nearly in our backyard! We emailed, got a deposit on the first male of the litter, and have been patiently waiting since. Our breeder, SS, emailed us on our trip in May to California for the Big Sur Marathon weekend that the dogs were bred and would be due around July 4th! In the meantime, we got lots of fantastic update emails and facebook pictures of the mother, Kistle, growing bigger and bigger each week until it looked like she had swallowed a watermelon.
And I guess she had, because July 2, 11 happy healthy puppies appeared!! C and I went back and forth between two males that had lots of liver spots as those were what we wanted and two males had more than others. The parents of the litter are gorgeous, so we knew even before they were born that the choice would be difficult. For four weeks we kept going over the pictures trying to gleam personality and spunk from the still frames, all the while the markings were changing and the puppies were growing leaps and bounds. Around the fourth week, a new male caught my eye and I realized just how handsome this guy was!
On their fifth Saturday, we went out to visit the breeder and the puppies. One of her other GSPs had a litter of 11 the day before our litter was born - that meant 22 puppies to go play with and get puppy love from (also puppy stinky smell, but I'm willing to deal if it means puppies!!). Our friends A & J came with us and played with all the girl puppies we neglected - I couldnt play with them because I was sure I'd fall in love with a girl, but we were there to pick out a boy! There were puppies piled up sleeping on one side of the puppy area (<3 puppy piles of the sleeping variety) and puppies jumping up for love and attention. And there was one puppy, Male 5, who was sitting in the middle curiously looking us over. We played with Male 2 and 3 keeping an eye on Male 5 - does he play with littermates? Is he curious but not overly anxious? He seemed to be happy in his pack, but keep coming over to check us out for a sniff before returning to playing, almost as if he was aware that new people were here, but didn't go crazy over attention. We finally pulled him out of the puppy area and he was allllllll snuggles. Immediately curled up and napped on me. C held him for a bit and them played with him and then back to me for more snuggles. Male 5 had a lot of ticking, but just one small liver spot. He had a blaze on his face that was slightly off centered and he definitely had spunk.
We were settled - Male 5 it was but we needed a name for who we had quite affectionately referred to as "Puppy" for the last eight months. "Can't wait for Puppy to come home!" "Do you think we should get a round or square dog bed for Puppy?" We couldn't call him Puppy forever, and we had batted around a long list of names previously. We took some pictures and put Puppy back with his littermates to get bigger and stronger for three more weeks (boy was that hard!). Our friend, M, took one look at his picture and said something along the lines of "oh my he is a cutie! he looks like an Oliver!" We nodded in agreement - it fit perfectly. So here we are - Aug 15 - with 12 days left until C and I bring home little Oliver!!
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| Oliver - 5 weeks |
