Happy Birthday to Winston and Snickers!

On April 7, Winston and Snickers turn one!

As you might recall, a day after Dusty, the Angel Pup, passed away last August, Mark fell in love with a black and white puppy he saw online and we drove out to Pennsylvania to see him.  When the black and white puppy responded to us with a petrified look and by going catatonic, we asked about a sibling and met a small tan and white puppy with a scratched eye and severe underbite that brought the black and white one to life.  Since the tan-white one rescued the black-white one, and the black-white one rescued Mark, we took the two brothers home with us.

This is what the tan and white pup we named Snickers looked like last August.

Winston looked like this.

The two brothers have been inseparable since we got them–they go outside together, sleep together, and eat together.  And they got big together.  In fact, because of the great food Mark made for them, Snickers is almost as big as Winston.  Oh, and less I forget, they get very, very hairy together.

To celebrate their first birthday–and because they were so very fuzzy–we decided to take them to our favorite groomer to get trimmed, bathed, dried, fluffed and to get their nails and teeth done.  The extremely patient groomer called moments after we dropped the dogs off, explaining that due to the snaggles in the dogs’ fur, she was going to have to trim them pretty short.   While we were prepared for shortness, we were not quite prepared to discover that beneath Winston’s thick coat were so many black spots he appeared to be part Dalmation.

Snickers, meanwhile, was buzzed free of the last of the black on his ears and the caramel color that once offset the off-white on his back.  The same thing had happened to Little Dipper back in the day, so Snickers’ look wasn’t quite as shocking to us.  Thankfully, neither dog seemed to care how different they looked.  When it was time for their birthday cake, they jumped right up to the table to pose for a photo.

Mark brought the cake over, and the dogs got exactly one good lick of chocolate for the photo before we took it away and pigged out without them.  See, chocolate is bad for dogs (and my waistline) but Mark and I were both craving chocolate.  Not to mention that the contrast of the dogs fur with a chocolate cake is far better a visual than a photo of them with a white cake.

After a bite of cake, the pups got a nice, long walk , a nap, and some new bones…which we took away after a bit because too much rawhide, like cake, is bad for dogs.  Poor things.

But all in all, I think it was a good first birthday for our pups, and a good first year.  So happy birthday to my pups.  Thank you for rescuing us.  And may you have many, many more days together.