Tag: pets

Meet Lily! (Plus Oscar’s Doggy DNA Results)

We’ve added another puppy to our family! Meet Lily.

We adopted Oscar in March, and several of his littermates were available alongside him. I was tempted to have us take a pair, but training two puppies at the same time seemed daunting. We had gone specifically to see Oscar, and taking only him seemed like the smart thing to do. Since then though, I’ve been paying attention to how many people I know of with two dogs and the thought grew more appealing.

We’ve been up in the Northwoods of Wisconsin off and on all summer and were just there again this past week. My sister-in-law told us about a litter of the cutest labradoodle puppies available an hour and a half away, and the next day, we were off to take one home with us! I didn’t think we’d add a second dog (let alone another puppy) so soon, but the opportunity arose and we took it!

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Oscar spent much of the summer with other dogs and got along well, so we were hopeful that he would be fine with another puppy and he has been so far. Oscar is six months old and Lily is ten weeks. They’re both adorable with sweet temperaments, and I suspect Lily will end up being bigger than him when they’re fully grown!

Also, I did a doggy DNA test (Embark, and $20 off through my affiliate link) for Oscar! We were told he’s a bernese mountain dog mix, but we knew that breed listings are so often a guess based on looks. He was fluffy with all the right body markings and people have even asked if he was part bernese while out on a walk. Whoops, 0% berner!

We’re more confident that Lily is a labrador/poodle mix, so I don’t know that I’ll do a separate DNA test for her. The results are so interesting though! There are advanced reports on various coat, color, and size traits, and Oscar got a clean bill of health for genetic diseases.

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We’re back home now (a six hour drive in a minivan with two adults, three kids, a dog and a new puppy, plus all of our bags!) and settling in nicely. We’ve still got our cat Mabel, plus the guinea pigs, Butterscotch and Nom-Nom. A full house with lots of paws! It’s wonderful.

August 10, 2018
Meet Our Puppy, Oscar Danger Balch
We adopted a puppy! (That deserves all the exclamation marks!!!!!)

He is supposedly a Bernese Mountain Dog mix — mixed with what, we don’t know. He’s a pretty chill dog for the most part and super snuggly with bouts of puppy playfulness. And bunny hops! Oh, the bunny hops.

I was in bed, unable to fall asleep, looking again at the recently listed dogs on Petfinder (something I had been doing a lot lately). He and his siblings had just been become available that day at a nearby clinic that works with the Humane Society and I immediately sent an email saying “I know it’s the middle of the night and nobody is there, but we’re interested in this dog and we’ll be there first thing in the morning!” The kids had the day off from school, so we were all able to drive over, fingers crossed that the pup was still available. He was! We spent some time getting to know him, then filled out an application and hoped we would be approved.

Murray was such an awesome dog, and we were all heartbroken when he died last year. I would look at pups up for adoption and research breeds all the time right after we lost him, and I realized I didn’t want another dog yet, I just wanted Murray back. Any other dog would only be compared to him in every way to see how he did or didn’t measure up, and that’s not fair. I think I was the last in the family to come around to feeling ready for a new dog with their own distinct personality.

We started looking in earnest to add another dog to our family a couple of months ago, but we weren’t finding the the right fit. There was the dog I fell in love with online who was adopted the evening before we went to see her. There was the dog that seemed great until he kept seeking out Calvin specifically to tackle him. And then there were the dogs in shelters that don’t adopt to families with kids under 6, or to homes with a cat, or to homes that don’t already have another dog to “show him the ropes.” It was frustrating at times, even while understanding why they have the rules they do.

We had certain qualities in mind that we were looking for (and looking to avoid), and I was hoping that our patience would be rewarded. I’m convinced we hit the jackpot with Oscar! I’ve never had such a young puppy before, but Brandon has and we’re in a great position to take care of one with both of us being at home throughout the day. I will say that we are tired though! The little guy is only 8 weeks old, so we’re taking him out every two to three hours for bathroom breaks, including overnight. We also read a lot of articles from mypetneedsthat.com to understand how handle a puppy.

He was neutered on Monday, came home with us Wednesday, and goes back to the vet tomorrow, but he’s not getting his stitches out for another week after that. Luckily the e-collar does not seem to bother him (bonus: it exaggerates his cute puppy clumsiness as he wobbles his way around the house).

The name, you ask?
- Brandon and I have both always liked the name Oscar, but I said no to it each time we had a boy because there was already an Oscar Balch of Oak Park / Frank Lloyd Wright fame.
- Danger? My middle name is Danger.
- The initials are ODB.
So yeah, I said no to Oscar Danger Balch as a child’s name. But as a dog’s name? It’s pretty perfect.

We’re in love.
March 23, 2018
Kids and Small Pets

A few people have emailed with questions because their kids are interested in getting guinea pigs or other small pets of their own. I can’t claim to be an extensive resource for all things cavy, but I can share our experience with how much our kids really help take care of them.

We’ve had a dog and a couple of cats since before Eleanor born, but she had been asking for a new pet for about a year. Both Brandon and I grew up with pets (he had a rat and his family had dogs, cats, and bunnies — my family had a dog and a cat too, and over the years I’d had a rabbit, a hedgehog, fish, mice, and a hamster), and we agreed that E seemed ready for one of her own. She checked out a different book about animals each week from the library throughout kindergarten, in part because she loves all kinds of animals and in part because she was doing her research. For her, it came down to hamsters and guinea pigs. Hamsters have fun cages with crazy tubes and lookout towers, but they’re more fun to watch than to hold. Guinea pigs are larger and more docile so they’re easier for kids to play with, but they take up a lot of room. E made her decision and went with her grandparents for her sixth birthday to choose a pet, cage, and everything to go along with it. Guinea pigs are happier in pairs (thanks, library book), and after a week or so, we found another female to join our house… except she was a he, and then they had babies.*

So now we have two giant pet cages — one in Eleanor’s room with the girls (Speedy and Butterscotch), and one in August’s room with the boys (Gingerbread, Noisy, and Cute-Cute until he left yesterday for a new home). August likes them well enough, but either because of age (four) or temperament, he’s not as into them as E is. She loves the guinea pigs.

Cleaning the Cage(s)
I organized all of the small pet supplies along the floor of our linen closet — food pellets, hay, chew sticks and toys, and clean bedding. (The best bedding is paper-based — pine and wood shavings are messy, smelly, and best avoided.) Guinea pigs are little poop machines, but they do tend to go more near where their food is. We clean that section as needed with a small dust pan reserved for the job, and then we completely change out the bedding once a week.

Eleanor can do it. Kind of. It takes her a long time and she makes a bit of a mess, so I usually do it with her while she ‘helps’ by holding the garbage bag. I want her to be there, not because I need the assistance, but because her pets are supposed to be her responsibility and she should know that they aren’t magically being cared for with no effort on her part. As she gets older, she may be able to change the bedding by herself, but I assumed going into it that Brandon and I would be helping for a while so it’s not a shock that I’m doing it. I am unfortunately allergic to them, so I sneeze and sniffle through the process (about 15 minutes per cage).

Food and Water
Eleanor can and does make sure there is food and water for the guinea pigs at all times. They need fresh fruit and veggies, and E likes figuring out what they’ll eat each day. We often give them any leftovers (carrots, apples, etc.) that the kids didn’t finish from their meals, but sometimes E has me make a teeny tiny fruit salad to serve. Adorable. The only part she has trouble with is the hay because it can get messy, so Brandon and I usually do that part.

Socializing
The girl loves her pets. Eleanor couldn’t pick the guinea pigs up at first because they’re quick and nervous by nature, but she’s good at it now and no longer needs help catching them. She has done a good job of taming them, and even thinks they do tricks and communicate with her in a secret animal language! Calvin likes to watch them run around their cages, and August will pet them when they’re already out and being played with, but he doesn’t take the initiative like E does. She wakes up and pets them. She has gotten out of bed at night and slept on the floor to be next to them. We wondered (as a lot of parents do) if interest would wane but Eleanor is just as into them now as she was in the beginning, and I think the responsibility of caring for them has been good for her.

Cute-Cute Goes to School

Yep, we’re less one guinea pig around here; Cute-Cute is now a school pet! He won’t be in August’s classroom, but just down the hall with another teacher. Eleanor was in school when Brandon and August took the little guy over, so I had them take a bunch of pictures to show her. They used the pet carrier toy from Eleanor’s vet set, and she thought that was pretty funny. She was also excited to see that there is a cage all set up in the classroom just like the one he was living in here, and that he’s going to have lots of new friends visiting him each day.

* According to Eleanor: if our guinea pigs have any more babies (please no — but apparently they mate immediately after birth, which we didn’t know and I’m watching Speedy get fat…), the boys will be named George and Jr. and the girls will be Lily and Twilight.

September 9, 2015
Five Little Fluff Balls

I had been suspecting it for a couple of weeks now. A quick search confirmed that Speedy did indeed look like a pregnant guinea pig, but I couldn’t successfully tell if Gingerbread was male or female. Supposedly, we had two girls. Brandon thought that Speedy was just getting fat, and maybe she was getting more food because she was the dominant one.

They’re a family of five now. Just like us.

BABIES!!!

Eleanor is SO excited. “They’re in love! They got married!” The babies have names already. Butterscotch (everyone’s favorite), Noisy (because it was making noise, obviously), and Cute-Cute (he/she is cute).

Their papa is in his own cage now. ↓

I’ve heard stories about people bringing home an already-pregnant pet, but ours are definitely the proud parents. We’ve had them for longer than the gestation period. And here’s a fun fact that I did not know before: guinea pigs will mate and can conceive again immediately after birth! So we’ve got that going for us. We woke up to discover the babies, and I had Gingerbread in his own cage a couple of hours after that, but I hope I’m not too late. Giving birth is hard on their little bodies (look at how big the babies are compared to their mom), and back-to-back pregnancies don’t always end well.

I’ll check and recheck and make my best call as to which ones are boys and which are girls, but I’m planning to take them to the vet for verification. I’m hoping that Speedy can live with her daughter(s) and Gingerbread can live with his son(s). Guinea pigs are social creatures and they’re much happier in pairs.

SO CUTE.

July 28, 2015