Welcome to Pauline Manor, Olive

Sometimes the biggest changes in life happen because you spend five minutes mindlessly scrolling Facebook. That is exactly how we ended up with six dachshunds.

After spending the day in the pool, I came inside, took a shower, and was sitting on the bed drying my hair while scrolling through Facebook. Buried in my feed was a post from the Facebook group Dachshund Moms, a community with more than 112,000 members from all over the world. A woman had shared that she needed to find a new home for her 16-week-old chocolate miniature dachshund... in Pensacola.

Her work schedule had recently changed, and she explained that the puppy was spending far too much time home alone. She loved her enough to realize she deserved better, and that could not have been an easy decision to make. My heart broke for both of them.

Naturally, I did what any reasonable person would do: I sent Mike a screenshot. He left me on read. So I followed up with another message that simply said, “Leaving me on read is not saying no…” He also left that one on read.

At that point, I considered the matter settled.

I messaged the owner, and about an hour later we were driving home with the newest member of the Pauline Manor herd.

Meet Olive.

Olive is a chocolate short haired miniature dachshund with endless energy, absolutely no respect for personal space, and tiny razor sharp puppy teeth that she has been convinced are acceptable forms of communication. The first few days were a whirlwind of introductions, puppy zoomies, and convincing the rest of the herd that yes, this tiny velociraptor was apparently staying.

The older dogs have handled her far better than I expected. They’ve set a few boundaries when she’s gotten a little too enthusiastic, but for the most part they’ve accepted that puppies are going to puppy. Watching everyone slowly find their place has been one of my favorite parts of this first week.

The funny thing is that I never planned to have six dachshunds. Five already felt like a wonderfully ridiculous number, and adding another one wasn’t even a conversation we had been having. If that Facebook post had shown up five minutes later, or if I had decided to scroll for just a little less time that evening, Olive probably never would have crossed my path.

Looking back, it still feels surreal how quickly everything happened. That morning we were a family with five dachshunds, and by dinner we had six. There wasn’t weeks of planning or searching for the perfect puppy. There wasn’t a family meeting or a long list of pros and cons. There was simply a little dog who needed a home, and somehow that home ended up being Pauline Manor.

It has only been one week, but Pauline Manor already feels like it was missing something before she arrived. Olive has fit into this wonderfully chaotic little family in a way that makes it hard to remember what life looked like without her.

She may not have been part of the plan, but sometimes the very best additions to a family never are.

Welcome home, little Olive. I have a feeling you’re going to have quite the adventure here at Pauline Manor.