Put your paws up.

You’d think we’d have a cake or steak, but although I love Ollie tremendously, he’s a dog and has no idea of the passing of time. He did get extra scritches and nose-smooches, though.

He still has his puppylick, though!

Durr. Derp.

Like most dogs, Ollie is a creature of habit. Every morning when I come out of the shower and head to the bedroom to finish getting ready, Ollie grabs a tennis ball and follows me in. As much as I’d love to play with him, I can’t. So he brings in a second ball in order to get his point across.

Play with me.

See that clock? I start work at 8:30. Yeah.

Once Ollie realizes that I won’t be tossing the ball, he decides to have fun solo. Which involves flopping on the bed.

Feel free to toss this ball.

Then when I sit on the bed to put my shoes on, he turns the cute meter to 11.

You can toss that ball anytime now.

Finally, my earrings are a sign to him that, sadly, I can’t play.

Maybe just a belly scratch?

Okay, Olliepeño. Just a belly scratch.

During all of this hullabaloo, Max is enjoying some non-Ollie time to himself in the other room.

So I pulled out a beading magazine and my stash’o'beads. I altered a pair of earrings for a friend and, inspired by a coil of copper wire and a ceramic focal bead (bought from Michael’s clearance rack), got to work.

Unfortunately the green pearls' holes were too small for my wire to fit through.

And here’s what I ended up with. It matches Ollie, so we’ll call it the Spaniel.

Ceramic focal bead, Swarovski crystals, brown shell beads and cream colored beads salvaged from an old garage sale necklace. With copper wire.

Dig the thoroughly unimpressed canine model.

Ollie, post yearly buzz cut

Here’s their “report card” from their last stay.

None of this surprises me. Max (I can’t believe he’s 7-8 years old already!) loves to be pet and snuggled. He’s my lap dog. Ollie (I wonder if he answered at all to “Oliver” while there since he never hears it at home.) will fetch and fetch until he drops over from exhaustion. Fetching is his job.

I also love the “I was a little messy” part. Atta boys. You trash that hotel room.

They were playing with the stuffed frog next to my feet when I snapped this one.

September marked Ollie’s 2-year-mark with us, and like magic something went off in his brain and he realized there’s a life above him. So now if I’ll be sitting on my chair he’ll walk over, put his two front paws on my chair and get completely excited about seeing what’s on my desk. Weird little dog.

It’s hard to believe that Max is 7 or 8 now and the only sign he shows of slowing down is that he lies down more. Otherwise he’s scheming ways to swipe the cat food without us looking or engaged in knock-down, drag-out, face-eating brawls with Ollie. He’s smaller than Ollie but he holds his own!

walkwalkwalkwalkwalkwalkwalk

Dreams:

1) giGANTic zit in my face and I had to go to work because I had no mire sick days left.

2) World of Warcraft is launching a new dungeon soon. That part is true. In my dream we got to tour the new dungeon. There were souvenir maps, placards indicating where the bad guys would be, and cake & coffee.