The Ori Diaries: Pt. 3

Ori is 8 months old. Wanna see what he looks like now?

Ori's 8 month old portrait, August 19, 2022

A fair bit has happened since my last post. not the least of which is that Ori's beautiful soft baby fur had to be shaved so he could better deal with the summer heat. He hated it. There was a bit of struggle to start with and some of his fur looked a little choppy for a while after, but it's all finally grown out. This, however, is the reason for the darker coloring along his back. It also means his "Rod Stewart hair" is gone. (And I hope that style does not grow back, if I'm being honest.)

Two more points of interest: he is a Frisbee and pear addict, and he's huge.

Firstly, we have a pear tree in our backyard. (We also have an apple tree, but apples seem to rot at a far more alarming rate than pears, which leads the dogs to not care for them as much.) Echo, in all of his older dog wisdom, decided it would be great to teach Ori that pears are delicious from the very first tiny bitter ones that fall all the way up to the ripe beauties that are human-grade food. Ori has become addicted. Whereas Echo will search the ground for just the right pear, Ori finds every single one in the area and begins chomping with single-minded focus.

The only thing that will get Ori away from the pear tree for any length of time is the Frisbee. When we first introduced Frisbees to Ori, they were in the form of human-grade flimsy plastic. Ori chewed chunks out of the first one within minutes. His dad chose to replace it with a slightly better quality one. Echo's stronger jaws (at the time) created a crack right through its center. Mom (me) got smart and ordered 2 rubber dog ones. The first is still being used to this day while the other sits in reserve until it's needed.

Now, Mom (understandably) throws like a girl. This means that when I take Ori out for solo plays, he chases down the Frisbee before bee-lining to the pear tree and giving himself a treat. I then have to walk over and retrieve said Frisbee, throw it, and repeat the process.

Dad throws like he's trying to win an olympic event. Ori loves playing with Dad waaaaaaay more than he does with Mom. Meaning, of course, that there's less pear distractions when Dad's around.

Eventually, this love of Frisbees transferred over to other throwable/chaseable objects such as beach footballs. Why do I bring this up now? Because, for the first time in his 8 months, Dad and I have successfully drained all of the hyper puppy energy out of this good boy. How? We took him, Echo, and the football to the beach. We were there for almost two hours, with a whole hour solely devoted to Dad throwing the football as far out into the water as he could and Ori bounding after it. Things to note here: it is EXTREMELY shallow where we were at. In fact, it all used to be a sandy area leading to the water, before Lake Huron decided it wanted more and started eating away at whatever beach existed. (And it was shallow water for almost a quarter of a mile BEFORE the lake ate the beach. Now you can walk out around half a mile before you meet a drop off in this particular location.) So at no point ever was Ori in water deep enough where he would have to swim. The furthest he went out came up to mid-chest on him.

After bounding after the football, Ori would then bound back inland where he would then make us chase him to get it back. A while later, he started doing his patented trot back in and he'd let Dad take the ball from him. It was around the time he started going up onto the beach that I realized he was getting tired. But he also wasn't done playing, and every time the ball was thrown, he was in there after it. It was when he started walking back in that I decided beach day was done and we went home.

I had made jokes that his legs would be sore the following day. Dear reader, today is that day. And he is not running on all cylinders. In fact, he'd prefer not to run at all. How do I know? Because we got his Frisbee out this morning. We threw. He chased. He grabbed it ... and laid down in the nearest shady spot available. Every. Single. Time.

It's nice but weird to have him be the lazy dog of this household (Echo is the rightful ruler in this regard) and I'm not mad about it. Maybe now I won't get interrupted thirty times a day while I try to write. (Wish me luck.)

So now onto the second part of this post: the growth spurt(s). For this demonstration, you will get pictures of Echo and Ori so you have some idea of what the control is and how big this dog is getting. Mind you, Ori was the runt of his litter. His breeder estimated he would be around 50 pounds grown, but could reach standard size as it was subjective. On average, the males of his litter were estimated to be between 60-65 pounds, and the females slightly smaller. Keep this in mind.

Echo and Ori, February 19, 2022 (Ori is 2 months old)

This is the first ever picture taken of my boys. Look how tiny Ori was! Echo was so gentle with him when he first came home, and he loved having a little brother to knock around. I sincerely miss Ori being this small. So cute. Much fluff.

Moving on...

Echo and Ori, May 1, 2022

Do you all remember this one from the first Ori post? Around this time, Ori was only a little bit smaller than Echo. He was 4 months and one week old at this time.

Echo and Ori, June 28, 2022

And now here's something you can't unsee: Ori's patchy shave job because he doesn't know how to sit still. What you're witnessing in this photo is that Dad left after dinner and the boys were watching him go. At this point in time, Ori had just turned 6 months old 9 days prior. I'd been trying for a week to capture an image that would illustrate the new size difference. Especially because he'd been recently shaved and the fluff no longer gave him added height advantages. (Oh, and it was also around this time that he went to the vet for a weight check and we discovered that Ori was 54.8 pounds. Meaning at 6 months, he had already passed his breeder's conservative guess.)

Lastly, we have this from one day before he turned 8 months old:

Echo and Ori, August 18, 2022

Same scenario: Dad was leaving and the boys had to watch. Looking at both pictures in this post, the size jump does not seem as significant due to the angles, but it is. And it's a whole different scenario when they begin to wrestle now. Even sitting down, Ori seems to tower over Echo.

Well, that's all I've got for now. Going to go take advantage of his laziness and hopefully get a lot of writing done.