Leo, Otis & Ollie: The Pets Who Came After
Pages from Life, Part 2 of 2
When Dan ran away from his new home in Ooty and was never found, neither my sister nor I pushed for another pet. We liked dogs when they were around. But Dad’s transfers, our studies, and Mom’s mixed feelings made it easy to let the idea sit — for decades, as it turned out.
The gap between Dan and our next pet was nearly thirty years.
How much of finally deciding to get one should be credited to social media algorithms? Probably more than I’d like to admit. The choice of a Golden Retriever was almost certainly algorithm-assisted. Once we had Leo, #ForeverGoldenRetriever stopped being a hashtag and became a motto.
Mid 2021 is when we made up our minds to move to a Tier II city. Getting a pet was a joint family decision — and an energising one. We visited a couple of pet stores in Hyderabad. I reached out to long-lost contacts for breeder referrals — that’s how I first heard of Farmers Choice.
After a few referrals and some internet digging, we found a Hyderabad-based breeder.
For novice eyes, the pups looked excellent. We didn’t know what to look for yet. The father was a show-quality stud. The mother was in post-partum care. This was early January. We were slated to bring the pup home in February 2022.
The breeder delivered him in a cardboard box on a sunny February afternoon. We were ready — bed, first toys, pee pads, the works.
What a joy. Except for the cleaning up.
We named him Leo, for the mane that Golden Retrievers grow into. Leo wasn’t a difficult pup — good with sleep, not destructive. Except for a pair of slippers, our furniture was spared. Leo in tow, we moved to our own house early April 2022.
Leo handled the 14-hour drive from Hyderabad rather well. He didn’t eat a proper meal through it, but we kept treats and liquids handy. A pet-friendly serviced apartment bridged the gap between our arrival and the housewarming.
Through a referral, we found a trainer from the Police K9 unit. Leo picked up his tricks. Leash control — as with every dog in this house — remains a work in progress. I’ve stopped holding that against any of them; it needs more repetition from our end than we’ve managed.
Leo was a darling throughout his short span. My heart grows heavy writing this.
He had his share of health scares. None of us saw how swift the end would be. One root cause, we later understood, was unethical inbreeding. The questions I keep returning to, even in 2026:
Was it the environment? Open spaces carry their share of pests.
Was it the variation in food at home?
Was it the competency of vets here?
Is this country genuinely pet-friendly?
I don’t have clean answers to any of them.
May 8th, 2024 was Leo’s last day.
Leo’s loss — at a young age, to causes that may have been preventable — shifted something. A pet is not a decoration or a status symbol. They depend entirely on what we decide for them: the breeder, the vet, the food, the time. That weight hasn’t left me. If anything, it has pushed me toward thinking about what dogs genuinely need — beyond companionship, beyond affection.
The house felt desolate after. Part of what I felt was grief. Part was something closer to anger — at ourselves, at the situation, at the unanswered questions.
Farmers Choice had been consistent with WhatsApp status updates through all of this. That nudged me toward trying again — this time with a breeder who claimed ethical practices and top-quality lineage. We discussed it as a family. The decision: not one pup. Two.
The two pups were born on May 17th, 2024 — nine days after Leo’s last day. They arrived home on July 4th, 2024.
They needed names.
I was insistent on four-letter names — Dan and Leo had set that pattern without my realising it, and three letters felt too short now.
Otis — from a web series. Ollie — shortened from Oliver.
If Leo was gentle and contained, Otis and Ollie arrived like a joint announcement of chaos. With two, the cleaning wasn’t double — it was quadruple. Chair legs became chew toys. Wallpaper was not spared. Slippers, predictably, suffered. Feeding time brought a level of ruckus that, on one of Mom’s rare visits, drove her out of the kitchen entirely.
We found a trainer — Pramod who had worked on the Kannada film 777 Charlie. The training ran for nearly fifty days. The time they were away was, honestly, a breather. The house stayed clean. As eager pet parents we made a mid-term visit to check on their progress; saw the explosive energy they were carrying.
A word on each of them, as they are in 2026:
Otis — clingy, seeks human touch through the day, eager to please. Has learnt words: wipe, car, tata. The kind of dog who follows you from room to room and considers your lap a rightful territory.
Ollie — needs his space, has a mind of his own. Less interested in approval, more interested in his own agenda. Will come to you on his terms, which somehow makes it more satisfying when he does.
Both are anxious in cars. We’re working on it.
In 2026, I still think there’s room for one or two more. A Belgian Malinois perhaps, or a German Shepherd — a nod back to Dan. Life will decide the timing.
For now, Otis and Ollie own the stairs, the garden, and a significant portion of the furniture. The house hasn’t been quiet since July 2024.
That feels exactly right.
Part 2 of 2. Part 1 — Dan, the Pet Who Found Us — is here.
Thank you for sharing. It is a great article, Abhishek.