Category Archives: Lollie

Lollie and Santa, reunited

December 13, 2010 By in Lollie 24 Comments

When you look at Lollie’s pictures with Santa from this weekend’s MCHS fundraising event, you may think: this could not possibly get any better. But we assure you, it can.

Of course it is hard to see past her clear gaze, her comfortable stance, and her coyly tilted head– first right, then left . . . but look a little closer. That dashing, realistic, fabulous Santa is not just any Santa. He is Lollie’s best friend from the shelter- her key champion, and the main reason that we ended up fostering her. If you work really hard at it, you may recognize Dave from one of our first posts, when we went to pick the little girl up at the shelter.

So in a way, Santa already granted Lolita an advance Christmas wish—to go from bruised, starved, filthy stray dog found in a dumpster to spoiled, shiny-coated, well-fed house pet.

But she still has a much more important wish, and she asked Santa for it on Saturday: a forever-home and forever-family where she will be loved and appreciated for years and years to come. Could you make her wish come true?

lollie – destroyer of vegetable

December 11, 2010 By in Lollie 12 Comments

Date: dinner time yesterday Location: dining room Feeling: like getting into some salad. literally.

Lollie wants you to know that eating raw kale is a three-step process. First, you shred the big kale leaf into dozens of tiny bits. Second, you scatter them about the dining room. Third, you run around and vacuum them up, leaving tongue-slime all over the floor if possible.

bedtime antics

December 10, 2010 By in Lollie Tags: , , , , , , 13 Comments

A while back I wrote about how dogs love to get into a rut, and described adoptable Lollie Wonderdog’s emerging routine. Part of this routine is combination play session / snuggle time before bed. I think Lollie looks forward to this time and when it comes, she really hams it up for us. Here are some of her signature moves.

Adoptability factor 2: Trainability

December 9, 2010 By in Lollie Tags: , , , , , , , , 11 Comments

This is the second in our new weekly series on what makes sweet Lollie Wonderdog so very adoptable. Although there are endless adoptability factors we could list, we are limiting this to a weekly series so we don’t overwhelm you too much.

Adoptability factor archive: 1: Snugglability

Lollie is an extremely fast learner. If you have been following her blog for some time, you have seen the cute videos about how quickly she picked up “sit” and “down,” and read my bragging about teaching her “shake” in about three minutes.

Her trainability also manifests itself in more subtle ways: in how she quickly picks up cues, learns routines, and figures out the expected behavior. I believe some people refer to this as intelligence. She hadn’t been with us more than a few days when she learned that dogs are supposed to sit to have their harness and leash clipped on. It took but a few walks to figure out that doing a slolom course on the sidewalk was not the preferred walking method. One of fostermom’s cooking sessions was enough for Lola to know that the kitchen is a good place to hover when things start to smell yummy. As you may have witnessed a few weeks back, Lol advanced quickly from mistrust to Super Jedi Master of the kong puzzle challenge.

 Yesterday we introduced a new challenge to Lollie—the very difficult command we call “wait.”  She totally dominated it.

wanttreats-havetowait-wanttreats-havetowait-wanttreats-havetowait

smellsdelicious-hardtowait-smellsdelicious-hardtowait-smellsdelicious-hardtowait

pleasepleasepleasepleasepleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease!!

Lollie the carpenter

December 8, 2010 By in Lollie Tags: , , , , , 12 Comments

At the risk of pointing out the obvious: resident dog + foster dog = twice as many dogs as we had before.

And at Casa Fosterfamily, clutter is always lurking in a dark corner, waiting for us to stop paying attention so it can leap out into the open and take over everything. In its presence, we are so weak. It’s much easier to turn a blind eye and just bake a pan of brownies than it is to deal with the evil clutter monster. But, we try to combat it in small ways whenever we can.

Over the weekend, Lollie helped get the Dog Walk Station under control. We have this nifty vintage mail sorter by our side door, and when Chick was our one and only we used it to store dog walk related things: his leash, a spare key, poop bags, sunglasses, and gloves. With two dogs, though, it was getting a little unwieldy. Leashes, harnesses, collars, hats, and gloves were hung all over the poor thing, like some sort of ill-conceived, industrial holiday decoration.

So Lollie the brainiac helped us come up with a simple solution to keep things tidy. We went to a home restore and found some vintage brass cup hooks, took some simple measurements, and fastened them to the underside of our mail sorter.

Here is Lollie conceptualizing the project . . .

And figuring out the specs . . .

Just a few minutes later, voila! A two-dog solution! Nothing fancy, but it’s these little things that keep us sane while sharing our home with an extra dog.

out on the town

December 7, 2010 By in Lollie Tags: , , , , 12 Comments

This weekend we bundled up and took Lollie Wonderdog out to a busy pedestrian area in Silver Spring to strut our stuff (well, mostly her stuff). It has a pretty urban vibe, with lots of people and tall buildings, but no squirrels or rabbits. This kind of landscape always bodes well for Lollie’s gentlelady-like behavior, and she really hammed it up big time. Despite the strong winds and chill, people just flocked to her in her cute “adopt me” vest, which was recommended by our friend and mentor Maria of Tia’s Promise Animal Rescue. No applications yet, but we are hopeful. With her dashing good looks, perfect manners, and blockbuster personality, how can people resist?

Here are a few shots of fostermom and fosterdad with little miss thing.


return of le cone

December 6, 2010 By in Lollie Tags: , , , , , , 7 Comments

When she got her stitches out from her spay a few days ago, Lollie was dismayed to learn that while she is healing up nicely, she will have to wear her embarassing bandage and le cone de shame a little longer. Here is what she thinks about that:

skinny minnie

December 4, 2010 By in Lollie Tags: , , , , , 13 Comments

Doc said Lollie isn’t putting on weight fast enough. In fact, she came to us at 53 lbs, and now weighs 51 lbs. The weird thing about that is that we’ve been feeding her A LOT of a high quality, high-protein dog food, and plenty of peanut butter throughout the day. Apparently it’s not good enough.

Lucky for her, this means she gets to start having treats and fatty snacks in a totally unprincipled manner. Not as a reward for good behavior, but at every. meal.

Vet strongly recommended that we buy Lollie some cottage cheese to mix in to her food for a few weeks. It’s super high in protein, and should help her bulk up a little. The funny thing about that is that with the exception of dog food and treats, fosterdad and I run a vegan household. Still, for the good of our fostergirl I happily trotted to the co-op and got her some fancy cottage cheese. It looks so funny in our fridge alongside our soy milk.

Lollie seems to love it, as you can see. She chomps it up as fast as she can, and just for good measure, licks the outside perimeter of the bowl, lest a nugget of cheesy yumminess escape her tongue’s reach.

learning from her elder

December 3, 2010 By in Lollie 14 Comments

Many of Chick’s adoring fans have inquired about how he’s doing with all this attention to his darling foster-sister. You should be tickled to know that he is doing just fine, and in fact, he is blossoming in his role as Big Brother. Their time together is still limited because fosterdad and I are over-cautious, but when they are together, Chick certainly is teaching Lollie the ways of the world. See here:

“you see kiddo, when you see the peanut butter on the counter you just have to play it cool at first, and then the second she turns her back . . .”

“whuh? no, we’re totally cool… no funny business going on in here . . .”

“bow to your partner . . . and promenade around the circle . . . now do-si-do”

“now make that face like you are in urgent need of the treat in her hand. it works every time.”

soccer dreams

December 2, 2010 By in Lollie Tags: , , , , , , , 8 Comments

 

Lollie wants to inform you that in her past life, she was a soccer player. She still dreams of soccer when she sleeps, and sometimes, she sleeps with soccer when she dreams.