Ollie Finds a Family

Left: Ollie at Project POOCH. Right: At home with his new sister, Mollie.

Ollie came to Project POOCH on August 21 as a spirited, excitable, and exuberant pup. Found as a stray in Marion County, his previous history was a complete mystery to us. The first few weeks were filled with learning and discovery as the POOCH team got to know Ollie and get a feel for his likes, dislikes, and needs.

We quickly learned that we needed to help Ollie contain his overflowing exuberance for greeting people by helping him learn to keep his paws on the ground. This was the number one thing we worked on with Ollie, and it started first thing in the morning when the youth would get Ollie out of his kennel. We needed to help Ollie learn that excitement was good and greeting people was good, but jumping on them and bowling them over was not. With consistent and predictable training and LOTS of cheese, Ollie improved a little bit each day.

Over his weeks and months at Project POOCH, the youth helped Ollie develop his confidence. He may have looked like a big tough guy, but looks can be deceiving. Ollie was afraid of vans, loud noises, new people, and he was afraid to try the equipment in our training center. With lots of patience and training, Ollie worked through a lot of these fears. The day before he left POOCH, the youth had Ollie RUNNING up and over three different obstacles in our training center!

As a young big, black dog, we knew Ollie was likely going to take a bit longer to adopt than other dogs. Currently, bigger dogs are waiting longer to find their forever homes than smaller dogs, and black dogs, just like black cats, have a harder time getting adopted than dogs of other colors. But we knew Ollie’s perfect family was out there. We just had to be patient, and continue learning more about Ollie, and sharing the attributes he was looking for in an adopter.

And as fate would have it, a previous Project POOCH adopter saw Ollie’s profile, and felt that he might be just what they were looking for. They had adopted their first Project POOCH dog, Mollie, a few years back, and thought that it might be a good time to add a new dog to the mix. Mollie was getting older and they thought she could benefit from some younger dog energy in the house.

Several meet and greets and a home visit later, and Ollie is settling into home life with his new family. He and his sister Mollie seem to have become fast friends. Ollie is benefiting from having an older dog to help teach him the social cues he might have missed early in life, and Mollie can benefit from having a playmate to help keep her young! The family reported that on their first night in the home together, the two of them took turns sharing their parent’s bed, without so much as a tussle.

Ollie was a favorite of the youth at Project POOCH. His youthful energy could drive everyone a bit crazy at times, but he helped to teach everyone patience and the importance of being consistent and predictable in training.

Happy trails Mr. Ollie!