Death by Chocolate. Well, Almost.

We brought him home at a mere eight weeks old, barely weaned and cute as anything. He was the runt of the litter and I picked him out specifically because he wouldn’t stop nipping at my shoelaces — sure sign that he was to be mine. (And hopefully a red flag to you, in case someone ever tries to brainwash you into thinking that buying a puppy sounds like fun.)

He’s always been a little on the hyper side. “He’ll calm down when he’s two,” my husband, Frank, and I kept telling ourselves. Just yesterday I heard myself saying “He’ll calm down when he’s 13.”

It’s not that I don’t love the dog. It’s just that, um, well, hmm, he has some rather nerve-wracking habits that on their own might be tolerable, assuming you’re heavily medicated. But seeing as how I’m not — toss squabbling brothers, a toddler and a seemingly permanent case of PMS into the mix and well, God love him, Ollie is always the straw that breaks the mommy’s back.

Like the majority of Labrador Retrievers, Ollie loves water. You can’t keep him out of a pool, pond or stream, but try to get him to go potty in the rain? He drops to the floor, 80 pounds of dead, obstinate weight that my not-so Herculean muscles just can’t budge.

And balls? He’s an addict. His entire existence revolves around scoring his next ball fix. In fact, it doesn’t even have to be a sphere per se, it can be a cup, an octagon from little Emma’s shape sorter, or even a plastic shovel from Alex and Ben’s backyard toy collection. He has an uncanny knack, that was cute the first 874 times, for dropping the afore mentioned items on the ground and pushing them via snout, right underneath the foot of an unsuspecting person simply looking to make it from the living room to the bathroom without twisting an ankle or breaking a neck.

He knows how to open cabinet doors and in fact managed to stuff his not-so-svelte body into the tiniest of toy chests the other day in quest of a super ball. He is, without a doubt, a nut.

I admit whole-heartedly that it’s not his fault. It’s ours. We did all the first-time doggie parent things. Took him to the park to have a social life, trained him to be a Frisbee dog and generally devoted all our spare time to the little scoundrel.

“You know Ollie’s actually going to become a dog after the baby’s born,” my mother told me on the phone toward the end of my first pregnancy. I dismissed this with an exaggerated eye roll and another dive into the box of cereal I was snacking on. She’s a cat person, after all. Big, sloppy, shedding, beasts are my thing, not hers.

Now – more than a decade and three kids later, I’ve realized the gospel truth. Mothers are always right.

So I’ve decided to try something new in my quest for domestic bliss (okay, actually in my quest to prevent my head from spinning, which tends to scare the children). I’m choosing to focus on Ollie’s redeeming qualities. After days of shuffling around the house in a stupor muttering “there must be something” over and over again, here’s what I’ve come up with.

First, he is the darn best security system anyone could hope for (minus the fact that he can’t be disarmed). I have no worries that a prowler will ever enter our home without my knowledge, since nary a walnut dropping from the tree nor a squirrel on the porch goes without a hardy round of brain-rattling barking.

The next is that his dog bowl is always half full. He lives life just knowing that while it looks like I’m really chopping vegetables while balancing a little human on one hip, if he gives me a solid, meaningful “woof” and runs to the back door, I might drop the knife, veggies and baby like three hot potatoes, come to my senses, and take him straight to the park.

Lastly, he’s a love with the kids. Although “No Ollie!” was one of the first phrases uttered by all three of my offspring, he puts up with whatever they dish out. From being ridden like a racehorse to being the pretend dragon in a 5-year-old’s drama, he’s never once snapped at the kids.

Which, come to think of it, is more than I can say for myself.