Woman's Best Friend

Lennye has a very sweet post about her new grand-dog which immediately got me thinking about the precious stories in a new book I'm reading called Woman's Best Friend: women writers on the dogs in their lives. I LOVE it so far! Every short story I've read in it has brought tears to my house, some happy and some sad. The book is not full of cutesy little stories about how everything is sunshine and roses when loving and caring for a dog...it's "real" stories about how though you have to clean up a lot of messes at times, mop up muddy footprints right after mopping, etc...they have this way of showing you how to love even when they might be a scraggly little dog that you never even really wanted to love in the first place. They somehow sneak into your hearts. My three babies all have their own little snuggly places in my heart and all have their different ways of getting on my nerves and their ways of doing something that makes me melt. I've recently branched out in my blog lurking to find blogs that I'm surprised I didn't look for sooner which include people who love their dogs like children, people who blog mainly about their pets. I've left numerous comments on the "crafty" people's blogs and the "designer" people's blogs because I like looking at their pictures and their pretty things they make and the pretty houses they live in (some with the kind of furniture that obviously barely has people sitting on it, much less DOGS), but I don't really fit into those categories. It's like trying to be in a group in high school that you just don't seem to fit in and no matter how much you like what they have going on, it's just not going to work and you just need to get your butt back over to "your" group's table. Sometimes in life people try too hard to see the differences of your lifestyles, and not how you are similar. You go from having many things in common to all of a sudden not. As I've gotten older, it happens more and more with the circle of friends getting smaller and smaller because of this reason or that reason. It's an occurrence that saddens me. But in the blog world, that's not something you really have to put up with because you can just CLICK and be someplace else! A lot of people won't even visit your blog after you've commented and after a couple of times of that, I might look at your blog, but am not going to bother with giving you compliments or acknowledge you exist anymore...because if you can't reciprocate, the only child in me kicks in after a little while and tries to go find some love and acceptance somewhere else. :) The one thing I've noticed about some of the dog people blogs is that some of them write their blogs as though their dogs are talking in a constant, not completely English, cutesy baby voice and that's just not something I can get into even if the stories are cute. And Lennye thinks MY dogs are spoiled! So...to make this long story which I did not intend to become long, short...I'm trying to say that I'm trying to find my niche, the place to be while the crafters are making things and talking to crafters, the designers are designing and the mommies are mommying...I'm searching for those bloggy buddies that have dog children but don't write in baby talk (talking to your pets in a cutesy voice is one thing, writing in baby talk is another--for me anyway), who maybe even have some of the same things in common like loving home improvement projects, and just might enjoy a random photo of a cupcake or paint peeling off a wall every now and then too! :)
Casey did this to himself at bedtime when I was going around giving nightly kisses...I know, I know...but it was adorable and I had to get some pictures. Poor Nikki doesn't resemble a schnauzer, hair cut for her coming up too!