the story of nozomi

as most of you know, i have a soft spot for dogs. over the last couple of years, hubby & i have come across a number of lost dogs and have done our best to get them back to their owners. about a month after we arrived on island, hubby took our pups out for their morning bathroom break. a few minutes later, he is calling for me to help him. i put our two pups in their kennels and a moment later, hubby brings in a medium sized dog with long, dirty, matted fur and no collar. she was jumpy and seemed to be a bit afraid of hubby.

i sat on the floor and beckoned to her in a soft voice and she immediately came over and allowed me to pet her. we wondered how long she had been out on her own. as we spent some time with her, we assumed she must have been someone's pet. we fed her and gave her a bath, as well as attempted to groom her - cutting out the matted chunks of fur. let me just say, she had kind of a bad haircut by the end of it. but at least she was clean.

we started making phone calls and trying to get information about where to take her and how to find her owner. turns out, the resources for saving animals are practically none existent. there is an adoption service run by volunteers that deal mostly with puppies & kittens. the vet and kennel on base was no help. the stray facility located off base (even had STRAY in the title) wouldn't take strays found off base. the local pound would only keep an animal for 5 days and then the animal is put down. we were trying so hard to do a good thing and kept running into walls and red tape. so we took her to a vet off base and had her checked out - she didn't have a microchip, was given her first set of shots, was dewormed, and tested for heartworm. unfortunately she tested positive for heartworms; however, the vet was very confident that she would recover with treatment.

after all that she had been through, i decided she needed a name - so i chose "nozomi" which means hope in japanese. we started contacting our small group of friends to get the word out about getting her adopted. as much as we wanted to keep her, it wouldn't be fair to her considering we already have our two pups plus a baby on the way. word got around quickly and we found a family who was willing to foster her until we found a permanent home for her. shortly after she went to her foster home, another family heard her story and gave her a furever home!

sweet nozomi

vito's 3 year anniversary

today is the anniversary of vito's third year with us! he's calmed down a bit (kinda) and is quite a bit bigger than when we first picked him up.

as you can see, some things haven't changed :)

puppy owiee

thursday afternoon, we took the pups to the park - they ran around like crazy and had a blast! then, as we were walking back up to the car, we noticed vito had blood from is upper pad to his paw. he had a pretty good cut on his leg (not that it slowed him down at all), so we cleaned him up and bandaged his owiee as best we could.

friday afternoon, i checked on him & mia and took one look at his paw and immediately called the vet.

i took him in and they looked his cut, cleaned it and redressed the wound. they gave him a sedative that made him seem drunk so they could really check his cut. and seeing vito that way, SO helpless and sad, just broke my heart. especially since he's such a happy, vibrant pup.

i had to help vito into the car and he laid down the entire ride home - which he's never done is his 2.5 years of being alive. he whimpered quite a bit and barely managed to get up the stairs. i'm pretty sure that trip to the vet was harder on me (emotionally) than it was on him.

thankfully, he's back to normal now. i'm pretty sure he's trying to make up for his afternoon of sleeping because he's become extra crazy vito.

crazy mia

she is so entertaining....

easter

i know this is a bit late, but i had to share. our easter was a bit different this year - we celebrated at my parents house instead of ours. it was SO nice and the food was amazing. after the meal & visiting, we were heading home and our friends sent us a text & said they found a puppy. so we turned around to see if we could lend a hand.

they had checked the houses around where he was found and no one knew who his owners could be. he had a collar, but no tags and was quite friendly. we estimated he was about 4 - 5 months old, since he was in the process of losing his baby teeth. this puppy had to be about 60 pounds and his paws were huge!

hubby and i volunteered to take him to animal control to see if they could scan him for a microchip. after we arrived, they scanned him and nothing came up. SO disappointing. they gave us a couple of options - we could take him home & foster him, while actively looking for his owners or animal control would hold him for 3 days, then try to adopt him out. we wanted SO badly to take him home & take care of him, along with our other fur babies...but ultimately decided he would be better with animal control.


i checked their website for lost dogs for a couple of days & finally called them to see if he was picked up. they said he wasn't listed in his system so his owners must have taken him home.

i joked with hubby that going to animal control on easter was becoming a tradition...if you don't remember why, read here, here, and here to find out :)

this dog is the fourth lost pup this year that i've come across. i can't believe it. i hope this never happens to my pups....i would be heartbroken. hopefully i've built up some good doggie karma.

it must be spring fever...

it's warm (low 30's) and sunny (the sun actually FEELS warm for the first time in months) and suddenly my hair decides to be ridiculous and wants to get chopped off. check out my previous hair escapades here.

its been many years...but i'm thinking of making a big change.

my current do (or lack thereof...since i've basically given up trying to fix it in the morning):

isn't mia a cutie? :)

and the potential new 'do:

pic

thoughts?

p.s. that's not the BIG news

photoshop practice with vito

here's another photoshop attempt.

the original (phone picture):

the edited version:

on the edit, i tried to adjust the exposure & take out some of the yellow lighting. i also cleaned up the carpet (i wish cleaning carpet was that easy). i selected vito and brightened him up separately from the background. again the pic quality was poor...i wonder how i would fix that graininess, if it's even possible.

vito lays like this all the time. he's such a goof.

photoshop practice

i've been working a lot on my photoshop and decided that i needed to start practicing with some of my photos. ideally, i would like to post them once a week or so, but we'll see.

the image quality of this picture was poor to begin with, since it came from my phone. but i figured i'd give it a go anyway.

here's the original:

and here's the photoshopped version:

mia is pretty grainy and i'm not thrilled about that, but at least now you can see her face. keep in mind i only just got through my 3rd photoshop lesson. what i learned from this attempted edit: good picture quality is a must! and editing an all black dog is hard.

i'm guessing you'll be seeing a lot of photos of the dogs being adjusted in photoshop since i have about a million pictures of them :)

vito

today is vito's 2nd anniversary with us! i can't believe it's already been two years since we picked him up from his foster home.

he was SO tiny

and cute (a terror too)

now he's all grown up!

we couldn't imagine our lives without him :)

charlotte

we met this 6 month old cutie over the weekend.


she's a riot - banging into tables, wagging a mile a minute...she's ALL puppy. can't wait for ours to meet her!

cuteness

oh my goodness, look at this puppy!

source

sketchbook project update

so i've been embarrassingly lax on working on my sketchbook for the sketchbook project. as in, i've worked on about one page. eek. so to remedy that, i decided that i will draw at least once a day during the month of december - and not be too hard on myself if the drawing doesn't come out perfectly. i think i need to get back into the habit of drawing more often, rather than just for print designs...to sketch just for the heck of it.

here's what i drew last night:

miss mia was curled up on my side of the bed - and her head was on my pillow. i tried to move her but ended up rolling her over since she weighs a ton when she's snoozing. it was SO cute.

snow!

we had our first big snowfall last night & this morning...the first snow that stuck. winter is here! i wish i could say that it's bright & white & pretty outside, but this is what it looks like:

kinda of blah and gray...at 11am.

mia was funny this morning - i don't think she really remembered what snow is. when i took her out to go potty, she was unsure of the white stuff and was very cautious about stepping anywhere. so cute!

randomness

guess what? i actually downloaded some music from itunes for the first time ever. aren't you proud? haha. ludo's broken bride ep & regina spektor's begin to hope album will be keeping me company this weekend as i push my way through the printing & binding madness.

oh, and it was trying to snow last night. more of a spitting from the sky type thing was happening, but the white stuff is coming. soon. i really need to get my snow tires on.

i was getting ready for bed the other night, and when i checked on the pups after my shower, i was treated to this lovely sight:


this is a big weekend - in addition to art, this will be the first year hubby & i will be handing out candy to the little hoodlums in our neighborhood! and...halloween is also our mia's 1st birthday!!!

this is not the most cohesive post ever. scattered, a lot like the way my mind's been the last few days. lots to do, so i better get to it...have a safe & fun weekend :)

jekyll & hyde

this is normal mia:

this is playing mia:

a lot like dr. jekyll & mr. hyde, right?

puppies!

over the weekend, we also took the pups out for some fun! we took mia & vito out on long leads and hubby wore his fishing chest waders. vito already knew how to swim from last summer. we were unsure about mia so hubby walked out into the water with mia on her lead and gently persuaded her to follow him by holding her beloved frisbee. we learned that she's a natural :) so here's mia & vito and some new friends out at the lake having a blast:

evidence

we have evidence to believe that mia is part water buffalo:

buffalo pic from here

mia's puppy class

this is from the last day of mia's puppy class. the pups get a chance to run around together and socialize. enjoy :)

weekend is here...almost

for a short week, this one sure was busy. i am SO thankful for the upcoming weekend, even though i'll be working my butt off. i managed to get a lot of things checked off the wedding list, including a big one: addressing & mailing the invitations! i have a few extras that i will take some pics of this weekend to show you all.

since bfff will be busy all weekend, i am going to (finally) use a spa gift card for a much needed massage, spend some quality time with the crazy pups, and make mass amounts of books for the upcoming art show. oh, and clean the house. and actually fold the laundry instead of just leaving a giant pile on the floor. which mia decided to use a little bed last night.

speaking of mia, in addition to coming out of her shell and being a rambunctious puppy that literally zooms around the house, she's also learning some new things from her brother vito. for example, vito has taught her that socks are FUN! grabbing socks from any pile of clean or dirty laundry, flinging them into the air, playing tug of war with them, or just keep away from me....all of it is tons of FUN. i used to see vito proudly trotting past the doorway with a sock in his mouth. but as of this morning, mia was the sock queen. four times past the door, different socks, and a puppy gallop! we're so glad she's finally settled into her home. even though 90% of our socks have holes now.

what are you all doing this weekend? what ever you do, ENJOY!

memorial day weekend

we had a busy memorial day weekend! we visited with friends, hung out with our puppies, (bfff) cooked some yummy food, addressing some envelopes (wedding invite post coming soon), and went on a hike.

actually, it was more like bfff woke me up early on sunday and said we are going on a hike. so we got our stuff all packed up, got the doggies packed up, and my dad came over to hike with us. we went to a place called bird ridge...and it was basically straight up the mountain the entire time! the weather was gorgeous and here's some pics of our adventure:

taking a break after a couple hours of hiking

check out the view (with dad)!

beautiful!

vito is STILL not tired

mia tuckered out (and my stark white legs)

dad saying hi

tired puppies!