Today is our little Miss Shimmer's birthday. She is 6 years old.
Shimmer is the quietest of all our girls, but is in reality a fun, loving little girl.
Shimmer started her life as a showdog, having had some pretty good success in the ring. She had a couple litters of beautiful pups, but wasn't quite producing what her breeder was after. Being a very conscientious breeder, she decided to not continue to have Shimmer produce puppies and instead she needed to be in a good home where she would be pampered and loved. We already had Stormie, so she immediately thought of me.
If I recall, the reasoning was that she would be able to model the darker clothing, which would show up nicer on her lighter colored coat. Whatever, the convincing worked and Shawn agreed that we could add another to our growing brood.
Problem was, this was December 2008, the Pacific Northwest was gripped in the worst weather year in over 25 years. We had several feet of snow. The breeder, Liz Moore, lives in Spokane, a 7 hour drive from our house, and she had 5-6 feet of snow. How would we do this?
I kept watching the weather charts and could see that we both had a window of opportunity on New Year's Eve. It was going to be very cold, but no snow. We had our son's huge Dodge Ram Big Horn truck, so we knew we could make it, even if we hit some bad weather.
We got up in the wee hours of the morning and headed out. The only snow we ran into was in the parking lot of the meet-up location. In the past we have gone to Liz's home, but she was willing to make it easier for us by meeting us right off the highway.
Sweet little Shimmer joined Stormie (they seemed pretty happy to see each other again) in the back seat and we turned around and headed back for another 7 hours. We made it with no snow, although Spokane got another foot and a half that night and had solid blizzards for another week. We also continued to have storms, but we had our new girl and were content to stay inside and get better acquainted.
Shimmer is a love and we are so fortunate to have her in our family. We are having a big birthday 'pawty' for her on Saturday, August 14. She will like having all the attention that day, I am sure.
She caught on to the Diva attitude very quickly.
