Second birthday

I just realized that today is Buster's second birthday!  We obviously didn't do anything for the day but he had a fabulous time at doggie daycare and is currently exhausted after chowing down dinner.  Thank goodness I got my snuggles in before he passed out.  :-)

Obviously, our dogs are a big part of our lives and our family.  The fact that the dogs are the picture in my blog header says it all.  At this point, I can't imagine not having the dogs in my life.  

While I love both of the dogs equally, the two dogs have drastically different personalities.  Some things I love about Koda more, some things I love about Buster more.  Koda has been around since the beginning of our relationship- in fact she was a year and a half when I first met CP so I wasn't around while she was a puppy.  But Buster....Buster came around just as we were getting the horrible news of our infertility.  We picked him up in May 2011 and he has been a welcome distraction from the pain of not being able to conceive on our own.  

Despite his silly quirks and his insistence on sometimes barking at strangers, I love him to death.  He is my cuddle monster even though his entire body no longer fits on my lap.  He looks up to Koda even when she is growling him away.  He is always wagging his tail and constantly wants to please us.  Food, squeaky toys, snuggling with us, and giving us hugs are his favorite things.

When we lived in CT one of my acquaintances remarked that we really love our dogs because we posted a lot of pictures of them on Facebook.  This remark was made fairly soon after we got Buster and lets face it, dogs ARE the cutest when they are puppies so why wouldn't I post pictures?  At the time, the comment kind of offended me because there is so much more to me than our puppies.  But over the past two years, I have embraced the fact that I am a crazy dog person.  Maybe others can't understand it, but I simply don't care.  Buster came into our family during a dark time in our life and has only made our life 10 million times better (Koda would probably disagree).  Buster and Koda are literally my babies.  They have kept me sane throughout this whole infertility process.

When my aunt and uncle came over for dinner two weekends ago they started talking about how all of my cousins have tried to give their dogs to them after having kids.  Well, all of my cousins are fertile and so for them, they haven't needed to rely on their dogs for some good cries.  OF COURSE the relationship with your dogs changes after having kids, but we would never, ever think about giving them away.

So Buster buddy, thank you for the past two years.  I don't know what we would have done without you.

My how he has grown the past two years.....

First day at home

Already loving the sticks as a puppy

He is always running

His tongue is never in his mouth

His favorite sleeping position

He doesn't love swimming yet....hopefully soon

He's fairly patient with me....

His lanky teenager phase

His favorite thing is to curl up in our laps

He loves to go on hikes

He can look quite dashing

And he LOVES to eat snow

Happy 2nd birthday Buster!!