Tomorrow Daniel and I are leaving for the weekend. We are headed to Austin for the annual Star of Texas tattoo convention for our third year with intentions to also see some sites and spend some quality time with my brother and sister-in-law. I've also recently developed an obsession with thrifting, so I hope to venture into a few thrift shops because I know Austin has some really good ones! I will be on the look-out for a mustard yellow wing-back chair (I will die if I actually find one for a good price) and any pretty little odds and ends I can get my hands on.
Taking the weekend trip to the convention has kind of become our little "anniversary trip" because the first year we attended the convention, Daniel and I had been dating for several months, but had made our relationship "official" just a few weeks before and so the trip to Austin was our first experience traveling together and taking trips anywhere (even just 3 hours away) is always so fun when it's with the one you love:) We even said the words "I love you" for the first time in Austin (awwww).
So, I'm excited to head south with high hopes of having a great time! One of my (not so secret) secret hopes is that my pregnant sister-in-law goes into labor before her due date of January 26th. I want to meet that baby and I want to meet him this weekend while we're there! My plan includes feeding her habanero peppers and maybe rubbing her feet to hit the nerve that can induce labor. I am also getting tattooed at the convention by Tristan (don't tell my mom), one of Daniel's co-workers, so I am super stoked on that too!
Traveling anywhere always means that I have to leave my three beautiful fur babies at home in the care of someone else. This seperation always makes me feel a little weepy and slightly guilty; almost as if passing off my responsibility for them to someone else for the weekend means I'm not responsible enough to be their mommy or that leaving them for a few days will make my fur babies sad and angry that I left them. In reality, I know they notice that we're gone, but I imagine they probably don't mind as much as I do. I am just a worrier (thanks, mom), but I know they are in good hands and that when we get back home after our trip, they won't even remember I was ever gone.
I imagine I love my dog babies the same way a mother loves her child. Not to say that the love a mother has for her child is equal to the love I have for my dogs, but I bet it is the same kind of love. The kind of love that hurts when you have to leave and is so strong that you never have question why you feel it, you just do and you'll never stop. I love how individual my dogs are. I love their personalities so much and their uniqueness... and their craziness.
Calla is the eldest sister. She was our first dog together (my first dog ever) and we planned all of the details before taking her home. We had looked online at a pet finder website and narrowed down our search to the local shelter in town and another shelter in a bordering town that had dogs we were interested in meeting. We went to the shelter in town and looked through all of the twenty or so cages before laying eyes on "Daisy". She was in one of the last cages we looked in, in a smaller room off of the main room, and she immediately caught and held our attention. She was beautiful; an innocent, amber-eyed, strawberry blonde creature, looking up at us with unbreaking eye contact. We later learned that her previous owner had dropped her off just a few hours prior for digging in the backyard (wth?!?!?!). She wanted to go home with us for sure and we fell in love with her instantly, forgetting about all of the other puppies we had fawned over just the night before, so excited to meet. Once we met her, none of those other puppies would possibly compare. Just two (of the longest ever) days later, we brought her home and we renamed her Calla (like the lily, get it?). She really turned out to be the most perfect dog. So intelligent, attentive, intuitive, and sweet; she has to this day rarely done anything to merit discipline, she never chewed on anything, had maybe 5 accidents of peeing inside total when we were first training her to use the dog door to go outside, she doesn't bite, only barks when she gets excited playing with her sisters or watching birds and squirrels outside, she always listens and obeys commands to "come" and "sit" or she knows not what to do when I say "no". She was an only dog child for several months after we got her in the summer, and I spent a lot of one-on-one time with her and even started taking her on daily excursions to the dog park (her favorite place on earth to this day). I think spending so much time, just her and I, had a lot to do with why she is still my most sensitive dog. She is extremely sensitive to the energy I put out. She can tell when I'm sad and she will always come us to me with this sweet and loving look in her eyes and start gentling licking my face. She can tell what days we are planning a dog park trip somehow, even before I give any indication, and she gets very excited with anticipation and dances around our feet until it's time to leave, she has endless energy all the time. Later, she even started telling me when one of her sisters (Dora) was doing something she wasn't supposed to like chewing my slipper or peeing in the house by coming up to me again and again, unrelenting until I would follow her to the scene of the crime. She once even saw a cat not even 5 yards away from us when we were unloading from a trip to the dog park and she was not on a leash and all I had to do was say "no, Calla" and she immediately diverted her attention and followed me away from the cat, inside. She is the 'perfect child' haha. Calla bear has always been my side kick, following me everywhere, wanting to be closest, but never clingy like Olive is. She always gives me "hugs" where she stands up on her two back feet and puts her front paws on my stomach and she will even let me take her paws in my hands and we will dance for a minute (my favorite thing) and she loves to smell and lick my honey flavored (and only the honey flavored) chapstick from my lips (gross, I know). She always peers around the door frame of the bathroom at me when I am getting ready in the mornings and looks at me to get my reaction to situations she isn't sure about until I give her the reassuring "sok Calla!" and she understands everything is fine. Calla is also the most tempermental. While the other pups are always easy-going, Calla is particular and even makes a certain sound when she is annoyed. It is always when she is laying somewhere and either Olive or Dora invade her personal space (she does not like to cuddle up with them) or when she is laying on the bed with Daniel and I and we are moving around to get situated too much for her liking. It really is a lot like the sound someone might make when they are doing that disapproving grunt that just comes from the back of the throat. I like to put my hand in the ring her husky-like tail makes sometimes when she walks by me and she thinks I didn't notice her. During the school year, when I have to go to bed several hours before Daniel gets off of work, Calla always takes her place on the bed to wait for me to get into bed and then lays next to me, my little spoon. Needless to say, Calla has a special place in my heart.
And then there's our newest addition, Olive. Olive is the little dog I never knew I wanted and I could never imagine life without her. We adopted Olive on a whim from Daniel's mom, who rescues dogs and cats. She has been rescuing cast-off animals ever since Daniel was a child, and at any given time, she may have a collection of 20 animals living on her property in specially designed homes both inside and outside her house. On this particular visit, Olive had newly arrived a couple days prior to our visit by way of Daniel's brother. His brother spotted Olive in the road of a major intersection in the town they live in and saved her from being hit by cars. Later that day, Olive was at her new temporary home in Daniel's mom's house with all of the other little dogs that live there. When we met Olive, she was known as 'Penny' and her favorite playmate was not any of the other small dogs, but the one larger dog that lived in the same space as the small dogs. She was a firecracker of a dog, our 'Rocket Dog' we later ended up calling her. She was a young puppy, while all of the other dogs were older and overweight, out of shape, so Daniel actually brought up the idea of taking her to live with us. After spending the afternoon outside playing with her, I reluctantly agreed to take her home (afterall, three dogs is waaay more than two!). On the hour long car ride home, Penny lay, curled up in my lap, with her tiny chin resting on the center console; that's when I fell in love. It wasn't love at first sight like Calla, but the love I have for Olive grew into something so special because she snuggled her way into my heart during that car ride home. We also decided on her name then, on the car ride home, and she was then known as Olive. Our little Olive. 'The littlest dog', we affectionately call her. She was fearless when we introduced her to Calla and Dora, one dog double her weight and one dog over five times her weight! Calla seemed unimpressed, but Dora took right to Olive. They are like two peas in a pod. It's so hilarious to see Olive bow up to Dora and wrestle with her, play tug-of-war and buddy around with her, clearly without the realization that she is so much smaller than Dora. Size doesn't matter to her. At any given time, if you find Dora, Olive is nearby, either rough-housing or snoozing the day away. Olive is also a true lap dog. She loves to be clingy and close all of the time, even if someone else (Calla) is close, Olive will get closer. Even as I type this on the couch, with my laptop in my lap, she proceeds to lay across the keyboard and look up at me like, "here I am, in my spot, snuggle with me". She is so precious for this. She is the sleepiest little puppy who loves to cuddle up and even sleeps right between Daniel and I, under the covers, in bed at night. All night. She has a bladder of steel because she literally would never get up to go outside if we didn't pick her up and put her out there. She is forever curled up in a tiny puppy-sized ball, surrounded by some blanket or material she has pawed at to get her desired fluffiness, and I love the little *tink tink tink tink* noise her tiny claws make as she walks across the hardwood floor in our bedroom to jump up on the bed to nap. And when she naps, she usally always has her eyelids at least partially open and I can usually see her eyeballs swimming to the back of her head. Another thing I love about Olive is her hair. She has the most scraggly, scrappy dog hair that always falls in her face and makes her look like a puppy tomboy who doesn't know how to tame her bangs yet to keep them out of her eyes. Lately, she makes the sweetest little sounds too, when she's tired and in between naps, like maybe Cindy Loo Who from Whoville sighed just barely, just enough for you to think you heard something and then wonder if you actually did. She really is the baby of the family and she knows it too.
Til next time...
Puppy friends and I say,
Take Care.
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