A photo journal comprised of my thoughts on motherhood and other life happenings, as well as some of professional work as a photographer. Southern California is home.
Meet our newest member, Jimmie. We adopted him from a couple of college students in Riverside. He’s 8 months old and all kinds of sweet and playful.
Some ramblings on Jimmie thus far:
-He has an affinity for woven baskets. I’ve lost one thus far.
-We almost enjoy when he gets in trouble. He cowards down by your feet and ultimately curls up into a little ball on your feet and looks up at you with the most pleading puppy dog eyes. He then proceeds to roll over into total submission. And so, a basket – here and there – has proven worth it.
-He has mad hops. His trademark move at the dog park is when he pushes off of all fours and literally hops entirely over another dog. It’s insane. A show stopper, to say the least.
-He poops and pees a lot. But has not made an accident indoors. So yay. This is excluding his “excited pees”, which is when he just can’t help himself because his butt is wiggling so hard that he dribbles, just a little.
-Notice a close resemblance to Sarah? We do too. It’s bittersweet. Bitter because it feels like we’ve simply replaced her in this weird cloning type way and sweet because he is totally his own person (er, dog) and fills some of void left behind from Sarah’s early and traumatic passing.
-I think Hooper remembers Sarah being all up in his space and he seems fine with Jimmie doing the same. In fact, the other day we were scolding Jimmie for jumping on Hooper when Hooper said, “It’s okay Papa, he can jump on me”. Van is not as cool with his personal space being invaded, but is getting used to it. Van likes sitting on him.
-There are three of us in bed now. I’m not sure how I feel about it, but he sure does look comfortable at night. So… whatever.
-We have taken him everywhere we’ve gone since we’ve got him. He’s been alone only twice; once for an hour and once for a half an hour. He’s ridiculously attached to us and will sit by the door and groan anytime one of us leaves.
-He came with the name “Cooper”, which didn’t bode well with “Hooper”, so we renamed him after his previous owner: Jimmie. The nickname game has already begun, starting with Jimbo, Jimmie Boy, Jimbo Slice, and Jimmie Jonkers.
-He needs to be fixed. Otherwise all the lady dogs in the area better watch out. My sister just adopted a new female pup and Jimmie is, um, very fond of her. So much so that they can’t be in the same room ::cough cough::
I love dogs. So does Willy. We both grew up with dogs for the better part of our childhoods and when we finally moved into our home nearly three years ago, it wasn’t long before Sarah joined us. Willy has nagged me to get another dog since. A “friend” for Sarah, he protests. I’d bring up things like lack of space and cost of vet bills. In Sarah’s first year of life she almost died from aspiration pneumonia after a botched spay, got bit a rattle snake, had an anaphylactic reaction to a bee sting twice, not to mention the non-near-death vet visits like ear infections, a possible tick bite after camping in the woods, and giardia. Multiply that by two and I don’t know that we could stomach it emotionally or financially. Lately it’s been easier to put off his request as I protest with a mere glance down at my belly and a shake of my head proclaiming, “Oh no, I’m not allowing a puppy to join this family at the same time as a newborn”.
Well this past weekend, we dog sat. Sarah has many boxer friends and one of them, Joplin, joined us for one night.
Don’t get me wrong, it was a blast. The sofa was rearranged about five feet back and at a diagonal slant and the cushions were thrown off faster than you could say “Get off the sofa!”. It was pure mayhem and it didn’t stop all. weekend. long. To make matters worse, Sunday was a downpour and poor Willy was stuck inside with Hooper and two overly playful dogs while I worked. Needless to say, after the mayhem that took over our house, the all night long whining due to separation from one another, and the five o’clock in the morning surprise jump on the bed lick fest, Willy came to a smart decision: One dog is enough. That husband o’ mine, he’s a wise one.
Here’s some shots from the Sarah & Joplin Extravaganza:
Looks relatively calm and easy, right? It took many treats to get these two still for a couple pictures. The rest of the weekend looked like this:
