The Stage is Set

All the packages have arrived and I'm all done nesting for now.  I've vacuumed one last time and picked up all trash in the backyard (I know these actions are probably a lost cause, but I feel more settled and ready now).  Here's the run down:


The Kennel/Crate:
Mom is lending us her smaller crate during housebreaking before we move Oliver to his large adult crate.  As I mentioned earlier this week, we're using half fleece blankets from Ikea as bedding until we move to the larger crate when he'll have a bed.  I've folded a dark gray fleece blanket over the top to cover the sides and make a "den" for him.  His gray stuffed elephant has been patiently awaiting his arrival whilst guarding the den...

Can we cuddle soon?

A growing boy has got to eat:
I was excited to hear that our vet feeds her dogs and puppies an all natural no-filler dry food.  For the pups it's Diamond Naturals Large Breed Puppy Lamb & Rice Formula.  I'm hopeful one day Oliver will be such a good runner partner that we'll have to switch him from the Large Breed Adult to the Extreme Athlete from Diamond Naturals!  He'll come with a one gallon bag of food, but I went ahead and ordered another 20 lbs from Amazon Prime and this food container to keep it locked up from the monster!  We'll discuss the food with our vet, but I don't anticipate having to change from this.  

Disclaimer:  Unfortunately, no food container I found
said "Puppy-proof" or "Dog-proof"... but it will keep it air tight...

Best part of the bag:  No Wheat, No Corn, No Soy
(This means no fillers, better quality, and best of all - better poops!)

These boots were made for walking:
Along with crate and food, we also ordered a collection of dog walking items.  I picked up the red collar and black leash at target for <$5 together on clearance a month ago.  It's a small collar and he'll only need it for a few weeks so I'm on the lookout for a sweet collar a size or two up.  From Amazon Prime I ordered a rechargeable flashlight for nighttime activities (we'll get to test it camping tonight) and a red step-in style harness with reflective stitching.  I ordered the harness in case we have leash problems and it's always good to have a better hold on the guy while we are learning manners in public.  Through Petsmart's website I was also able to order some items during an online sale that Amazon didn't have - one of which was his customized tag with name and our phone numbers.

Warning:  Adorable-ness ahead on right!

Such a dashing gent!:
We picked up a few products for grooming.  Since our neighbor has a 5 year old GSP, we knew exactly what kind of coat to expect.  To me, it really reminded me of horse coats so I was thinking a curry comb and finishing comb would be perfect!  Petsmart had both in the slide-on-your-hand style and while I was ordering I also got some toothpaste and finger toothbrushes. The puppy shampoo was bought at Target a few months ago when our bunny Jill (see below) was having some potty issues and needed to be washed.  I guess you can say it's pre-approved?  Smelled good...

Clean teeth and fresh breath for all those puppy kisses!

Cleanup, Aisle 2:
Have I mentioned my love for Amazon Prime?  I ordered a bag of 700 biodegradable poop bags on the rolls (with free dispenser), a bag clipper, and two cleaners:  carpet and hardwood stain and odor removal.  We're renting and our landlord was very gracious in letting us get a puppy (I think she feared an infant more).  Click on the photo to enlarge the awesomeness of the bag clipper.  The velcro loop attaches it to the leash handle and then you knot up the filled poop bag and clip it onto the holder so it hangs HANDS FREE.  That's right - this mom won't be carrying the poop bags.  (It'll be great when running with him too - I can't ever recall seeing someone running with the poop bag in hand while smiling - god forbid you trip and fall on that!).

Taking bets on how many days 700 poop bags will last...

Yums:
I may have gotten a little carried away when it comes to the treats...In the basket we have:  3 bags of 100 calorie pack treats from Petsmart (came free with our orders), 1 bag tiny liver training rewards, Treat N Ball Bag, 1 bag soft wellness puppy treats, 1 beef hide bone, 10 beef hide chip rolls, a bin of all natural granola dog biscuits, and a bin of HOMEMADE dog biscuits.  The Treat N Ball Bag will be neat - it clips onto your pants or belt and can hold treats and a tennis ball for days at the dog park -or- in the backyard.  We can easily reward Oliver during his training sessions.  The homemade dog biscuits are good.  I can say this because we both ate them!  The recipe in the link is a little off though - we used close to 4 cups of flour.  We baked them according to directions, but they were more like tiny dinner rolls with a crunchy outside - like french bread.  I was worried about moisture and future sogginess so we baked them for a few more minutes the next day and now they are downright crunchy like a dog biscuit.  Our neighbors GSP tried one for us and immediately looked (with pitiful eyes) for another.  Success!

A good start but I think we're going to need more...especially training treats...

Up close pic of the homemade dog biscuits - Looks like a bakery roll!  

Spoiled Much?:
As mentioned previously, I thought we were running a bit short on our supply of toys to rotate out.  After a trip to the pet store and the Amazon shipment coming, I am finally satisfied!  He'll also come home with a toy that smells of his littermates, so I'm prepared for him to latch onto that as his favorite for a while. The rundown:
Stuffed Toys:  gray elephant (who guards the den currently), large stuffed soccer ball, and stuffed football with rope toy built into it
Chewing:  rope toy, rope knot, puppy teething rings, kong (?)
Fetch:  two tennis ball, rope knot (?), kong!, floppy frisbee, and a squeeky gorilla ball.  The gorilla is great because it bounces awkwardly like the kong - should be intertaining

Their attention span is fantastically short for now!

Who do we love?:

WOLFPACK!  That's right - football season is almost here and Oliver will...be..ready!  This came yesterday and I'm quite excited.  Chris has stated "No clothes" but made a quick exception when I found this (of course he'll wear a coat running in the winter...but no dress-up/ hollywood accessorizing for this boy!).  Slip the collar through the loop and bam! - a jersey bandana for game day!  I'm stoked.  He'll look so awesome in it!  We bleed RED in this house and with that, I will leave you with an AWESOME video that A sent this morning regarding our future child rearing.  

NNNNN  CCCCCC State...NC STATE!

A little something extra:

With all the preparation for Oliver, we've also been trying to spend some extra time with his future siblings - Jack (5) and Jill (2).  I found this grass play ball on Amazon and threw it in the shipment.  They have been chewing, slinging, and rolling this ball all over their play areas!  

A little something for the bunnies

Jill, big sis!  (She's going to FREAK!)

Jack.  Also answers to:  Jack Jack, Fatty, Buddy Bear.
 Current ruler of the house - should give Oliver a run for his money!

1 More Day:

Alright Mr Oliver - we're ready!  

Prepare for the cuteness!

2 More Days!

All items have arrived (except for his NC State gear - more on that another post!) and are unpacked awaiting his arrival Saturday night!  

Last night I saw this picture of Oliver and melted, until I noted the caption by the breeder.  Oliver is dead center of the picture (as always - he seems to enjoy being the absolute center of it all...)

This is what a gaggle of pups look like after 1) dewormer 2) vaccines
3) microchipping and 4) rough housin outside for 4 hours.
They FINALLY sleep. I wish I could do all 4 things every day! LOL

And what is Mr. Oliver doing?  Staring at the camera WIDE AWAKE!!!  I better get some sleep tonight - will definitely some extra banked going into this weekend!

I'll try to post pics of all his items tonight!

Preparing

We'll be picking Oliver up this weekend on our way back from the Fontana Dam 5K and 10K Races in the mountains on Saturday morning.  This was going to be my first venture back into racing, but I'll be doing well if I can hobble down the course (tore off a toenail while river tubing this last weekend when my foot slipped and got wedged in the rocks).  We'll be heading there Friday and camping along the river at the base of the dam where the race starts the next morning.  I'm looking forward to camping again - it means fall is right around the corner!!

But enough about running - Back to Mr. O!  We'll likely be picking him up en route home from the races so that means that everything has to be set up for him before we go.  This weekend I put together his puppy crate that my mom has loaned us.  It should hold him for a few weeks and having a smaller crate will make crate training/housebreaking easier.  We stopped at Ikea two weeks ago to grab some items for the house and picked up two white fleece blankets (total cost < $7).  They are big enough to cut each into two pieces that are double folded to use as crate blankets while housebreaking and the white color will make it easier to spot any accidents.  I placed one inside his crate with a stuffed toy and stacked all the extra blankets on top, ready for a quick switch-a-roo.  His crate is in the kitchen right between the back door and the laundry room - quick access for a dash outside to potty and quick access to the laundry room/cleaning supplies for accidents!

We also ventured out to the pet store Sunday because I felt like we did not have enough toys yet.  Our previous inventory consisted of 2 tennis balls, a rope toy and a stuffed toy - one of each of the major toy categories.  He now has plenty of each that we can rotate through them every couple of days, making him feel even more spoiled!  

Tomorrow the shipments from Amazon come.  I have the free 1 year Amazon Prime membership which has been great - I made a "wish list" a few weeks ago and put items for Oliver into it (food containers, toys, housebreaking cleanup supplies, chew toys, etc).  Our breeder feeds them exactly what we wanted to feed him anyway - an all natural dry food with no fillers - Diamond Naturals Large Breed Puppy food.  It's not available in the big box stores and the closest location is a tractor supply store about 20 min from our house.  But...Amazon has it and it ships free 2-day shipping with Amazon Prime - suh-weet!  

Another big shipment that'd due to arrive today are our Adirondack chairs (and table and pillows)!!  I'm super excited to have these and they are coming just in time for Mr. O.  They are a graduation gift from my awesome in-laws - we wanted some outdoor furniture for the lower deck.  We loooove sitting out on the upper deck and relaxing (I'm head over heels for our backyard) and now we can do the same on the lower deck while we play fetch with Oliver.  Or I can sit there and relax while Chris chases Oliver around and around and around....I anticipate spending a LOT more time out back now and these will be so perfect!!  I'll post pictures of all of the new items as they arrive.

I think we have all the major and minor "New Puppy" supplies and then some, but there is one thing I'm not sure about - Flea & Tick prevention with puppies.  We have Oliver schedule to visit Dr. T about a week after we get him, but for some reason I am paranoid about him getting a flea problem in that week before we go to the vet.  Is this a normal worry?  At the pet store yesterday we read the back of all the boxes and about 95% say to only use them on puppies older than 12 weeks.  Only the really expensive ones are good for 8-12 weeks old puppies and come in 3-6 month supplies.  Oliver will be around 8-10 lbs when we get him and will outgrow the small package (8-15 pounds) by the 3rd treatment for sure.  This is all very confusing and I'm hoping someone out there can help me decipher this flea/tick question!  Thoughts?

This is the story of Oliver...

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!!  

Oliver - 5 weeks