Our New Addition

The other day I was singing Justin Bieber's "I Just Need Somebody to Love" (hey, don't hate on the Biebs) and I realized it was true: I do just need somebody to love. This epiphany lead me to the conclusion that we needed a dog. That very day, I saw on Facebook that a family from church was needing to find a home for their dog. I of course interpreted this to be a sign that this dog was meant to be mine. Now to convince Nate. As I'm sure you can guess, I'm the spontaneous one and he's the responsible one in the relationship so the key was tricking I mean enlightening Nate so he would know that getting a dog was the responsible thing to do. After all, happy wife equals happy life. :) After plenty of research, he reached the same conclusion and agreed to a "trial run" with the dog. Little Ollie quickly won us both over making it impossible to say no to keeping him. And so I'm pleased to announce that we've officially adopted the cutest schnoodle you ever did see!

For all you Harry Potter geeks out there, his full name is Ollivander! I wanted Hufflepuff but Nate said that was embarrassing.

 He is a year and a half so he's still young and playful. He has a lot of energy but also likes to sit and snuggle. We haven't had Ollie very long, but we're already finding many hidden benefits to having a dog:

1. Having an indoor pet encourages me to keep the house cleaner because a) I don't want to leave things lying around that Ollie will chew on and get into and b) I refuse to have a house that smells like dog. I will be busting out the vacuum and the mop much more frequently.

2. Dogs like to be walked much more than husbands do! I love going on walks but Nate never saw the point of it. Now, I take Ollie for walks every day and he loves it. Nate even willingly joins us some days because there is a point to walking a dog.  

3. I am actually on time to work. Normally I hit the snooze at least three times, but I wake up on my first alarm now because I feel bad that Ollie is waiting to be let outside. I let him out and play with him for few minutes and still have more than enough time to get ready for work. Amazing how waking up 15 minutes earlier makes a difference.

We've also discovered that Ollie was on his best behavior for his 3 day trial period and his "true colors" are shining now. Today,  Nate called me during his lunch desperately looking for the breadsticks we'd had the night before. Turns out while we were away, Ollie ate the nearly half a pan of leftover breadsticks and a bowl of marinara sauce! No wonder he had no interest in his bowl of food last night or this morning. I suppose I should be mad, but really I just thought it was funny especially since Nate was frantically searching the kitchen for them. Who knows what other surprises Ollie has in store for us.