Oliver Jenkins

"Look mom. He's so tiny I can even carry him around!" said his best girl Emmie.Check out these paws. Even though he is fairly light he sounds like an elephant stomping around the house. He runs from us when we try to get him to come back in the house. He loves it outside! It's all about the teeth recently.

This is his favorite boy and his favorite chew toy rabbit.

We have been tossing around the idea of getting a dog for awhile. We need to finish the fencing and make a dog run. There are so many things to do before we do anything else. I decided I was tired of waiting and looked at the online pictures of the dogs up for adoption in Placerville. While I was looking at them, one I liked was adopted and disappeared so I asked the kids if they wanted to look at the dogs and of course they were excited. We flew out the door to the pound. It's a really nice place. You don't have to get permission to take the dogs out and you can walk them and play with them out back. We might start doing this as a family service project. It could be really risky though. We are definitely not ready for a second dog. I was looking at an older dog and the kids fell in love with a puppy named Oliver. They saw someone else looking at him and they started crying. So I impulsively went and signed the contract. He was such a calm laid back pup. On his description it read that he was lovable and lazy. That's perfect for a puppy. It also said he was a New Foundland German Shepard. I knew the shepard part so I expected he would be sort of big. Holy cow, I didn't know how big the Newfie part was. They are humongous. Bigger than St. Bernards! They are great swimmers and have webbed toes. They swim with the breaststroke not the doggie paddle. I can't wait to see that. I can't even imagine what that might look like. They're water rescue dogs and one actually pulled a boat with 20 people in it to shore. We are hoping to train Ollie to pull the kids in a sled up in the snow next year. Right now his is 9 weeks old. He's mostly fur, teeth and paws. He's afraid of the dark and being alone. He's learning to ignore the cats quickly. He likes them but he knows he's not allowed to bark at them. He tolerates being hugged and dragged. His favorite things are going outside to play, peeing on the carpet and sleeping every chance he can get away from the kids. The pound named him Oliver. Emmie liked it but not Clay. Clay has been wanting to name a brother Jenkins for some reason. So we decided to compromise and name him Oliver Jenkins. It seems strangely appropriate. He's been a lot of fun and a great new challenge.