Endless Love

This is a really hard blog post...

If you know anything about me, you know that I absolutely LOVE animals. To be more precise, I love dogs.  In fact, we have five.

When I met Eric, I knew he was someone I wanted to keep in my life because he had Cali, a goofy Boxer who had the attention span of a three year old. The way someone treats their dog is the way they treat other people, and that's SO true! If you didn't know any better and he was talking to you about her, you'd think she was his child rather than his dog. 

When we lived in California, I'd take her to the doggy salon so she could get pampered and dolled up:

The day we brought Izzy home, Cali took care of her as if she were her own puppy & loved her to pieces....

....and usually ended up stealing Izzys bed.

Then when we brought Cole home, she did the same thing with him. They are INSEPARABLE! Basically, when one gets up and goes to another part of the house, the other follows. As of late, he's been extremely attentive to her, checks on her by giving her kisses then snuggles up to keep her company.

When John was younger, he liked to wrap her up and play "Hide the Cali", then rough house with her. Yes, she's a VERY patient dog! lol

She always brings us "presents", whether it's a sock, towel, or torn up toy..she always wiggles and gives you a present right when you walk in the door followed by a nice kick to your knee cap.

Whenever we had a chance, we'd let her loose over at the beach and she'd run herself ragged!

As we all know, time ticks on and we all age. Sadly, dogs aren't excluded from that. Cali is now teetering on fourteen years old...and you can tell the age is wearing on her. Eric still swears that she's five and not a year older. Her cataracts are making it very hard for her to see stuff that's put right in front of her face, she has (MAYBE) 4 decent teeth she can use to eat with..arthritis flares up really bad on her hips...agh..it's heart breaking. All she does now is sleep, which I can't say I blame her. Getting up to go outside is a massive challenge for her..and when she is standing, she's wobbly and her footing is failing. 

Eric is madly...madly in love with her and it completely breaks my heart because I know "the time" is upon us..and he's going to be a hot mess. Well, all of us are, but he's going to take it the worst. At the most, we have a week left with her and we don't want to prolong her suffering despite not wanting to let her go...

Back in December, I noticed her health wasn't doing all that well, so I came up with an idea to do "Puppy Portraits". Sounds silly, right? Well, I ended up arranging a photographer to get some pictures / portraits and they came out better than I could have hoped for:

Now that we have the pictures, I wanted to make some sort of "shadow box" for her. Me being me, I clicked around online for a bit to see if I could find something along the lines of what I was wanting to do and ended up finding this:

It's pretty cool, but runs about $35 a pop. Since I'll be making one for each dog, that'd come to $175 in total! That's a bit steep, especially since I can do it myself. After doing a little bit of research, I found some recipes to make "Dough Ornaments" or  "Easy Crafting Clay" so I can do molds of all the fur balls paws. 

So, Eric and I started working on those today, did a trial run and ended up making a few impressions "just in case" some cracked while baking or they didn't come out right. In the process of working on Cali, we figured we might as well do the other dogs paws since I can make theirs into little ornaments. 

 Cali and Macie prints before

Cali and Macie prints after

As much as I picked on Cali & her smushy face, I really love that googly dog. She always cuddled up when she knew I wasn't feeling good, a fantastic watch dog & let me know when someone was coming, always did the happy wiggle dance when anyone walked in the door, extremely patient when John would hang all over her or try to ride her like a pony...a very,very loving dog. I'm going to miss her crazy little nub nub go nuts when I look at her, her snoring which rivals Erics, and yes, even her lethal farts. Cali is so special that not only has she had one family love her more than words can say, but had a family before us who loved her dearly. How many dogs have that sort of luck? She's beyond lovable and has made many, many friends throughout her journey with us. 

Value your pets and love them with all your heart. 
They deserve it.