A Little Introduction

 

Since I am starting our blog back up, I decided it was a good time to write an introduction and a little bit of history of how we arrived here.

My name is Kelli and I live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, in a nice suburb outside of Portland, Oregon. I have lived here my entire life.

My first dog was a Collie, which I received as a birthday gift when I turned 12. It had taken three years of begging my parents to let me have one. I named him Reno and joined 4-H to learn how to train and show him. I was hooked instantly and went on to show in AKC dog shows, handling my own dogs as well as other people’s dogs. Reno came with me when I married Shawn-the-Wonder-Guy. I taught obedience classes for several years through our local community schools program. I really loved that and met so many great dogs and people!

I started my business of designing a clothing line for the tiny dog breeds in 2008. We didn’t have any small dogs at the time, but we did have Cody, a beautiful tricolor rough Collie. He was a dream dog. So gentle, laid back, and patient with our kids. We had 7 children, so it was a blessing to have such a sweet dog.

Cody

I soon decided that I needed a live model for the photographs of my designs. After a brief search, I found Stormie. She was a retired show dog, who hadn’t really enjoyed the dog show world, but she loved to model clothes. My business really picked up after her arrival. And the name Cody and Company was created. The company part being the Chihuahuas. I acquired another Chihuahua, Shimmer, from the same breeder that I had bought Stormie from a year later. And Breezy came a year after that. Cody passed away from cancer, but we kept the name in his honor. The three girls were super stars. We attended many dog events, were featured in calendars, and Stormie was even on the cover of a Chihuahua magazine.

Stormie

Shimmer

Breezy

While I believed time would never catch up with us, it did indeed. The girls got older and one by one they passed away. But the thing with Chihuahuas is that once you are hooked, you can’t have just one. Soon, we had nine of the little beauties and I have loved every minute of being their Mommy. Unfortunately, Charm and Finn passed away in August 2023, bringing us down to 7 dogs: Cooper, our old man at age 14, Scarlett, Tallie, Tucker, Ivy, Leo, and Benny.

Cooper

Scarlett

Tallie

Tucker

Ivy

Leo

Benny

Charm

Finn

I closed my business shortly after the Covid pandemic. While no longer running the business, I have remained active on my social media pages, sharing the lives of our fun crew of crazy Chihuahuas.