This week I innerviewed one of the sweetest, BIGGEST pooches I ever met: Ollie Eisenberg, a 6-year-old, black Golden Doodle. Yes, I also uh-SOOMED Golden Doodles were, well, golden, but the only gold Ollie has is a dusting around the muzzle. Did I mention, Ollie’s Really Large? Pony-sized large. A hundred-an-five pounds of charm.
A Nice Lady answered the door an invited us in. I inconspicuously looked around the room, but didn’t see a dog. The Nice Lady innerduced herself as Ollie’s Gran-Mommy, Diane, an said Ollie an his Daddy, Joe, were still out on their morning leashwalk.
Pretty soon there was a commotion at the door, and a man and this gi-GAN-tic moose came boppin’ in. Unleashed, the moose came right over for the Wag-an-Sniff.
“Now I know what a teacup chihuahua must feel like,” I thought to myself, looking up at impressive Ollie: thick, curly charcoal coat, very frenly face, kind eyes.
“Hey, HellOOO, you’re The Bonz, right? Cool Kibbles! Sorry we’re a liddle late. It’s such a beautiful day, EVERYbody’s out walkin’. We musta stopped to woof with, like, dozens of poocheroos an their humans. My uh-PAW-luh-gees. Great to meet you! Wanna go PLAY?”
“Great meetin’ you, too, Ollie,” I said, remembering he was still a pretty young, playful poocheroo. “l’d love to play, but I’m On The Job so …”
“Oh, right,” he replied, grinning. “Maybe later.”
After gaining permission, Ollie accepted treats from The Satchel, after executing ‘Sit’ and ‘Give Paw’ requests from my assistant, whose hand totally disappeared under Ollie’s lion-sized paw. (“I get that from my big standard poo dad,” he later explained.)
Comf-tubbly settled in, I opened my notebook. Ollie launched into his tail.
“First off, My Mommy, Hillery, lives here, too, but she’s usually Somewhere Else cuz she’s a Traveling Nurse, an she goes wherever Extra Nurse Help is needed, usually places where pooches aren’t allowed.
“We met when she moved to here from Cuh-NETTY-cut for her nurse job, an wanted a dog to keep her comp-nee. She got me, a not-pick-of-the-litter pupper, from a breeder in Tampa, over that way.” He pointed. “I’ve always been a liddle, well, uh-WARE that I’m usually the Biggest Pooch in the Room an, when me an Mommy met, I was So Happy cuz she’s real tall, like me. I was So Comf-tubble Right Away!
“At first, when she was workin’, I’d go to Doggy Day Care with this Very Nice Famly, with a Mommy an liddle kids who got homeschooled, so I was Never Alone. It was grrreat!”
“That sounds Cool Kibbles,” I remarked.
“It totally WAS. How-EVER, Mommy mostly goes to work at 6 a.m. and doesn’t get back till, like 8 p.m., an it got to be Too Expensive; plus, we hardly ever saw each other that much.
She was inna duh-LEMMA. So she got Gran-Mommy an Daddy to let me stay with them Just Tem-puh-RARILY, which turned out to be a year. So Mommy said, ‘Pleeze, pleeze, pleeze can Ollie stay here PER-muh-nut-lee?’
“Gran-Mommy an Daddy said, ‘NO!NO!NO!NO!NO! NO PER-MUH-NUT DOG!’”
“Yet, here you are,” I observed.
Ollie laughed. “Yup! All us dogs know how that works. The Right Pooch an the Right Humans just seem to find each other.”
I nodded in agreement.
“Anyway, I started living with Gran-Mommy an Daddy per-muh-nutly on Gran-Mommy’s birthday in 2016. I love bein’ here, but, of course, I miss my Mommy. Oooo, an, Guess What?
I’m So Excited cuz she’s gonna be here on Valentine’s Day for a Whole, Entire Week!”
“Pawsome! So, how’d you get your cool name?”
“I was named for a buh-loved basketball coach at the college where my Mommy went to in Cuh-NETTY-cut, Kevin Ollie.”
“Crispy Biscuits! So, tell me about your pooch pals. Any fav foodstuffs? Toys? Daily roo-TEEN?”
“I have a buncha pals. I was just now walkin’ with Angus and his human, Patrick. Angus is a Bernese Mountain/Standard Poo mixture. Big Dog. But not big as me. Then there’re Hooper and Cooper, my ’cross-the-street neighbors. Hoop’s a Black Lab, Coop’s a Golden Doodle.
“They know me over at the Dog Park as Mr. Ollie Goldendoodle. I LOVE that place. I ’speshully love playin’ with liddle dogs an, mostly, they like playin’ with me, too. An, there’s a Cool Kibbles liddle gate where you can go take a dip in the river!
“I eat people food mostly, but only uh-PRO-pree-ut stuff. Mommy researches my foodstuffs first, to be sure they’re Good for Me. Gran-Mommy fixes me chiggen, veg-tubbles, eggs, beans, sardines, high QUA-luddy kibbles sometimes, an pumm-kin. My favrite’s baked squash. I also have a chewy cow horn Gran-Mommy fills with P-nut budder; an this duh-li-shus, emu-leg chew. I’m a Power Chewer, for sure, but I would NEVER eat a couch or a shoe or anything.
“My favrite stuffy is Simba the Lion King. Truth be told, he’s not all that stuffed anymore. I got a liddle too in-thoozy-ASTIC and sorta unstuffed him. But he’s still my favrite.”
Ollie’s Gran-Mommy produced Simba, who looked like a raggedy yellow dishcloth with a floppy lion face.
I stifled a laugh and, in a smooth segue, remarked how effortlessly Ollie conversed with his humans.
“Yes! Not bragging but I’m Really Smart. Gran-Mommy an Daddy always talk to me like a human an I know a whole buncha words. About 500, Gran-Mommy figures. Two words I’ll NEVER forget are Cane Toad.”
“Huh?”
“They’re Waay Ugly, big, squishy cree-churs that are fulla POI-zen and can totally kill you.
Lotsa pets are in Heaven cuzza cane toads. So Gran-Mommy put one inna bag and let me sniff it an kept sayin; ‘NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!.’ She did that a whole buncha times to pruh-TECT me. An it worked.”
“Where do you sleep?”
“I can’t sleep with Gran-Mommy an Daddy cuzza bein’ so big an fluffy. So I have two cuf-tubble, me-sized, Tempur-Pedic dog beds.”
Heading home, I was thinkin’ about charming Ollie happily playin’ with a posse of liddle pooches. An considerin’ re-speck-fully askin’ my Gramma to make me some baked squash.
Till next time,
