August 17th is Buttercup's Birthday!

August 17th is the day that I took Buttercup home to foster last year. She was 9 pounds when I got her with awful luxating patella and she was severly kennel stressed. She was absolutely pathetic at the shelter. It was so sad. I fell head over heels in love with her and she is just about the best gift that I've ever been given - first from Tara, and then from my Dad. Every moment we have together is a treasure and a bonus that I don't take for granted. I don't know how I ever got so lucky as to share some time with her and I definitely don't deserve her. She is a spectacular example of a dog and I don't know what I'm going to do when she's gone. I worry about that moment all the time. It scares me. But I have no control over that - I can only control how fabulous her life is, so that's what I try to focus on instead.

I've often wondered what her life was like before she came into my life - she was a stray picked up by Animal Control and then handed over to the SPCA and that's where I got her from - she wasn't house trained and she wasn't spayed and had obviously had puppies at some point in the past. She's about 10 years old now, so most of her life will have been apart from me - but she knows how to play and knows how to love, so she must have gotten both. But how can someone just let a dog get lost? If one of my dogs got lost everyone in the Halifax Regional Municipality would know about it. I guess maybe she was just thought of as a dog until I came along. Thank-dog she got lost so I could have her for a little while. Because I definitely needed her. And I still do.

There's a couple pages on my website dedicated to her at "I Love Buttercup - or why rescue dogs are better than pet stores dogs" and also a page called "Indulgent pictures of Buttercup" - I haven't quite finished with that page yet because I've got a LOT of indulgent pictures of Buttercup!


One of the dangers of having a digital camera and a tripod is the below examples that I took in honour of tomorrows anniversary. Buttercup was very gracious about the whole thing and didn't seem to mind too much and didn't really wake up for the session at all. She was just happy to get some good lovin'.


Me & Buttercup #1 


Very nice picture of the "man hands" 


What in the H-E-Double-hockey-sticks did we just both see? 


Buttercup isn't a big fan of the flash... 


I think this should be our "signature photo" - don't you think?