A Day At the park

We took Tallie to her first official event/outing today. It was a fun doggie event held at a local park. It was put on by Natural Pet Foods Solutions, a local Portland boutique. They were promoting a new monthly subscription box that they have started. Each box comes with toys and treats made exclusively in the USA,many from local vendors right here in the Portland area. They are calling it Dog Is My Religion.

We first went to the table that had sample boxes of their premiere box that launched this month. We thought the Buddha-dog was pretty cute. Tallie proved all morning that she is a natural poser.

While our Tiny Human got her face painted, Tallie and I walked around to see the displays and talk with people. They were having a raffle with some really nice prizes. We purchased some tickets and Tallie posed with some of the prizes while I filled out the tickets. The proceeds of today's events were being donated to our local Clackamas County Dog Shelter!

She was quickly becoming the hit of the event. How could you not love that face???

One of the reasons I was excited to take her to this event was the chance to socialize and meet all kinds of people. We have plans on getting her certified as a Therapy Dog, she has the perfect personality for it! A huge part of her early training is to get used to being handled by all kinds of people, as well as to learn to be comfortable in all kinds of situations. She got the chance to be held and petted by lots of people today!

I really loved the Puppachino bar they had! So cute!!

Another way to win a prize was to guess the number of dog treats in this jar. It was as big as Tallie!! She was willing to briefly pose next to it, but was very interested in all the other dogs that were there. Her little head was swiveling back and forth!

We went to the photo booth, where she sat and posed for pictures without me! That's fine, she is much cuter than I am! We talked to some dog food vendors and got some samples to bring home and try. Tallie watched everyone while I visited.

Next, we tried our hand at the little agility course they had set up. She thought I was a little crazy as I tried to get her to go through the weave poles, but humored me anyway.

Once she got into the tunnel, she became very brave and had to bark ferociously (in her mind if was ferocious anyway) at a large dog that was walking by. That was the only time she barked through the whole thing. I guess she felt pretty protected in there!

It took some coaxing to distract her and get her to come back through the tunnel, but she finally did it. We have a larger tunnel at home and she loves to run through it, so I don't think she really knew what this smaller one was all about.

The people who put this event on were very clever with their play-on-words for everything. The BBQ menu was adorable!

When we sat down to eat our lunch, Tallie made sure to give me the sweet face, making sure I was going to share.

Pretty much impossible to say no to that face, huh?

It was really a great first event for Tallie. I was super proud of her and how well she behaved. She was a wonderful ambassador (or is it ambassadress?) for the Chihuahua breed. Lots of people are not aware that they come in a Long Coat variety.  Others were impressed with how friendly she was, not shaking or growling. While I was proud of her, it makes me sad when people have that impression of Chihuahuas.

In the end, we won a prize in the raffle!! We brought home the bag of food that she posed next to earlier!

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This next Monday is the big Solar Eclipse. We live in Oregon, which is in the path of totality, and has brought nearly 1 million visitors to the state! We are staying home to watch it from our own yard, but I decided to have a little fun and took some pictures of Scarlett wearing the safety glasses. She was such a GREAT sport, considering you can't see anything but blackness when you wear them.

She even got her picture on a local news station's Facebook page! We are trying to not let it go to her head though. Haha!

It's Been A While

As the title says, it has been a while indeed. We are so active on Instagram and Facebook, but I never seem to be able to keep up on the blog. I sometimes wonder if anyone even reads blogs anymore...? Or are they satisfied with the pictures they see on the other social media pages? 

But, when I last wrote a blog post, we had just added Scarlett to the family. She is now over a year old, has grown quite a bit and is such a character!

She is pretty tolerant of my craziness in dressing her up and taking her places with me.

All in all, she is a Mama's girl, very spoiled. She still has the fun playfulness of a puppy, which I get the feeling she will never outgrow! She is bigger than any of my other dogs have been, weighing a hefty seven pounds. Well, that is hefty for a Chihuahua anyway! But, we don't like to make her feel bad about her size, so we don't discuss it much.

We were going well with three dogs (Shimmer, Cooper and Scarlett) for quite a while. Then our favorite breeder, Liz Moore of Diadem Chihuahuas, announced that she would no longer be breeding Chihuahuas (gasp!!). She had a beautiful smooth coat champion girl that needed a nice forever home to retire to. Ummmm, it didn't take me long to say "Me! Me!"

So, meet Charm, our first smooth coat Chihuahua!

Charm is three years old and such a beautiful girl. Isn't that face to just die for?? Those melty eyes just do me in. 

You may have noticed that all the dogs seemed to be in the same color range - tan and white. I have missed my little tri color Stormie so very much and had been looking for another one for quite a while. They are hard to find!! But, I had put the word out among some breeders that I know across the country and about the same time that Charm was joining our family, I got word that this adorable little fluff bundle was available and POW! after I picked myself up off the floor at how hard I had fallen in love, I sent a message to her breeder.

Soon, we were selected to be the ones to adopt her and arrangements were being made to fly her here from Iowa with a puppy nanny. Before she left her home, she got to travel to a dog show with her Mom and Dad. Look at that little crazy girl, chewing on that crate door!!!

I knew then that she was going to be a spitfire of a little thing, and I was right!

She made it safely to Oregon, after a loooong day in a carry on crate. All 1.8 pounds of cuteness was now calling Cody and Company her new home. I was head over heels in love.

So was Scarlett, who could not believe that I had gotten her a playmate. These two wrestle and roll all day long.

Gah!!! Can you believe the cuteness level here?????

Tallie brought us to the never-before-number of FIVE Chihuahuas. My husband, ever the supportive trooper, said that 5 Chihuahuas don't even add up to half a Collie, which is the breed of dog I had when we were first married. 

So, with that, we settled in to enjoy ourselves, even as I knew that Shimmer's health was fading. Diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure, she was not able to be very active and preferred to hang out in the back of her 'condo' (crate), away from all the antics of the two crazy puppies.

Still such a beauty, with her gleaming white coat, you would never know she was approaching 13 years of age, other than the cloudiness of her eyes.

She still had her adorable lop-sided smile, which I loved.

Sadly, one does not come out a winner for long when battling Congestive Heart Failure, even when on every medication possible. On Friday, July 28, she took her last breath while wrapped in my loving arms. She was less than a week away from her 13th birthday. I am so grateful that I had this cute picture of her from her birthday last year. 

It has been really hard for me to think about my three original girls all being gone now. The girls that helped me launch Cody and Company Pets. I have been reminiscing about all the events we went to, all the modeling they did for me, and the great group pictures we were able to photograph. There will never again be another trio like Stormie, Breezy, and Shimmer.

How I loved those girls. It makes me feel a little better knowing they are all together in Heaven and will be there to greet me someday. I do not understand why our precious pets get so little time with us, but those three girls will forever live on as the logo for Cody and Company.

Tallie has been working on her modeling skills and I think she will do very well as our new spokesmodel.