What Olive Has Taught Me About Being a Dog Mom

Some stories begin with a grand plan. Ours began with an online ad.

I had never owned a dog. Not once. I liked them from a comfortable distance, the way you like other people's children — happily, and without any real idea of the work. Jurie was the opposite. He'd grown up with dogs, and his heart still belonged to Nkosi, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and Havanese mix who had been the great dog of his life. Nkosi had to be put down for health reasons just weeks before our wedding in 2018, and even years later the loss still sat quietly with him.

I was the one who wanted another dog — though if I'm being truthful, what I wanted was something harder to say out loud. Jurie and I had been trying to have a baby for three years by then, and it simply hadn't happened. Month after month of hope thinning into disappointment has a way of quietly rearranging what you let yourself want. Somewhere in that stretch I made a small, private peace with a thought I never spoke to anyone: that maybe a puppy would be the only baby we would ever get to bring home.

We told ourselves we were looking for something like Nkosi — the same gentle breed, the same easy sweetness. Instead, we found Olive.

And thank goodness we did.

Bringing home a tiny stranger

Olive was born in August of 2021, and we brought her home that November, when she was just three months old. She was tiny and fluffy and almost unbearably adorable, and — if I'm being completely honest — she absolutely terrified me.

Nobody warns you about that part. You imagine the moment you carry a puppy through the door will feel like arrival, like competence. Sometimes it just feels like standing in your own living room holding a creature who depends on you for everything — eating, sleeping, learning, safety — while a small panicked voice in your head asks, what do I do now?

We didn't know. So we learned together, which turns out to be its own kind of answer.

The puppy phase is not for the faint of heart

The early months undid me a little. We sleep-trained her. We taught her that the puppy pad was the goal, and then, weeks later, taught her that the puppy pad was no longer the goal at all and that the world of grass and outdoors was where things happened now. There were accidents. There were so many accidents. There were interrupted nights and unreasonable mornings.

For the first six months, we walked her constantly — sometimes eight times a day. At the time it felt endless, a treadmill of leashes and weather with no visible finish line. Only now, looking back, do I understand what we were actually doing on all those walks. We were building a foundation. Every repetition was teaching her something. Every accident was part of the process, not a failure of it.

And then one day, almost without our noticing, she simply knew. The puppy who had seemed constitutionally incapable of understanding the rules had quietly become a dog who understood them completely. It's how so much of life works, I think. Progress rarely arrives in a single dramatic moment. It accumulates slowly enough that you almost miss the exact second everything changed.

The tiny tornado years

Of course, learning was not all Olive did. She also took it upon herself to redesign our home.

She chewed the walls. She chewed the window trim. She chewed anything her small determined teeth could reach, until parts of our house looked as though we'd knowingly adopted a miniature beaver. And still — this is the maddening magic of her — it was impossible to stay angry. Maybe it was her face. Maybe it was the sheer, uncomplicated joy she brought to every ordinary minute.

She still moves through the world like a little ballerina. Up on her toes, front paws pumping through the air, greeting each moment as though it is the finest thing that has ever happened to anyone. There's something quietly instructive about living alongside a creature who carries no yesterday and frets over no tomorrow. She is simply, entirely, wherever she is. I've come to think humans could stand to learn a great deal from that.

More than just a dog

I used to find the phrase emotional support animal a little overwrought — a nice idea, maybe, but surely exaggerated. Then I met Olive.

Over the years she has become one of the truest comforts of my life. When I'm sad, she knows. When I'm anxious, she knows. When something in my body hurts, somehow she knows that too, and she'll climb up beside me and settle her small weight directly onto whatever aches, as though she's decided to absorb it. She has licked tears from my face as if personally offended by my sadness, as if sorrow were a mess she'd been put on this earth to clean.

I understand she isn't curing anything. She can't take pain out of a body or worry out of a mind. But comfort is real. Presence is real. Being loved without conditions, on a hard day, by something that asks for nothing but your company — that is real, and some days it is exactly enough.

The things we got right, and wrong

Like most first-time owners, we began as models of diligence. We brushed her teeth. We bathed her on schedule. We researched everything, followed every routine, took the responsibility seriously.

Then life did what life does. Work got busier. Schedules shifted. And Nico — the baby I had quietly stopped letting myself expect — came along and rearranged the entire center of gravity of our days. And some of those good early habits — the dental care especially, the regular grooming — slipped further than I'd like to admit.

So here's the honest thing I'd tell any dog owner: the basics don't stop mattering just because you've grown comfortable. Teeth still need brushing. Coats still need care. Bodies still need exercise. Dogs go on needing all of it long after the novelty wears off. The grace in this is that it's never too late to begin again — and lately, we've been climbing back on track.

The truth about Olive

When I clicked on that ad back in 2021, I believed I was bringing home a puppy. I wasn't.

I was bringing home a family member. A small shadow who follows me from room to room. A bedtime companion who still sleeps in our bed and somehow occupies more of it than should be physically possible for a dog her size. A source of comfort on the days I have the least to give. A daily, living reminder to stay present, to find joy in unremarkable moments, and to remember that love does not always arrive in the shape you went looking for.

Sometimes it arrives with four paws, a wagging tail, and a documented history of eating your window trim. And somehow, it changes everything.

What first-time dog owners should know

If you're bringing home your first puppy, here are the things I wish someone had told me before I was standing in my living room quietly panicking:

You don't have to be perfect. You'll make mistakes and so will your puppy. Consistency will carry you much further than perfection ever could.

The hard phase ends. The sleepless nights, the accidents, the chewing, the low-grade despair — it passes. I promise it passes.

Exercise is about more than the body. Those eight daily walks weren't just burning energy. They were building confidence, routine, and trust, one loop around the block at a time.

Training is really just communication. Your dog isn't trying to make your life difficult. They're trying to understand the strange human world they've been dropped into, and you're their translator.

The relationship becomes the reward. One ordinary day you'll glance over and realize the animal beside you isn't a pet you're managing anymore. She's family. That's the whole thing. That's what all of it was for.

All those walks, all those training sessions, all those chewed-up corners — they weren't building good behavior. They were building a friendship that will last the rest of her life.

---

Are you a dog owner too? I'd love to hear your story — what's one thing your dog has taught you about life? Join my newsletter and hit reply; I read every one. And give your own furry friend an extra cuddle today, from Olive and me. 🐾