Happy Anniversary!

We brought Ricky and Lucy home a year ago today.

Little bitty Lucy- The day we brought her home.

Little Ricky- 3/31/11

I can't believe how quickly this first year together has flown by.  They were such cute babies!

This day last year...Ricky and Lucy: 8 weeks old

And now, they are growing up to be such beautiful dogs!

Gorgeous (even posing for me today with the sun in their eyes) and so sweet!

Happy Anniversary!  How lucky we are...

Wide Open Spaces

One of the spots that both Ricky and Lucy love going to lately is a field near White Rock Lake that also has lots of little trails to get lost in.

I put them on a 30 feet leash because I'm an overly protective mother.  Lots of people use this area as an off-leash park.  Hopefully we can get to that point eventually.  (Fortunately for us, we do have a huge gated field we go to some days--but that's a whole other blog post, which will be posted soon!)

It's a great, big, beautiful world out there!

Ricky hiking on a trail...

and here's Lucy!

Lucy practicing her "stay", and looking so little and cute!

SNIFF!

I take Lucy and Ricky to as many different places as I can think of.  Walking around the neighborhood streets each day just isn't enough!  Walks on the trails give them a whole new world of scents to work their noses.  And giving them a big, long leash (or even better-- no leash!) let's them move like dogs naturally do- speeding up and slowing down, stopping for a sniff when something's is really interesting, and just rolling around in the grass every now and then.

SNIFF!

Lucy and Ricky's New Collars

My brother is one of the best gift givers I've ever heard of!  Long ago, he bought me my first really nice guitar.   And also, as I've written about before, he's taken me to Hawaii a couple of times!  He picks sometimes extravagant, always cool, very thoughtful gifts.

So this Christmas, since I am all about my puppies all the time, the best gift anyone could give me would be something for them!  My off-the-charts-gift-giving-brother told me he was going to pay for both Ricky and Lucy to get custom leather collars by the uber talented Tricia Vaughan.  He had found her on the internet a while back when he had a super blingy collar made for his dog, Deville.

Here is Deville wearing his collar.

The Ricardo's and I were all super excited to start thinking about what their collars would look like.  Up to this point, they've had generic collars that really just weren't snazzy enough for them.

Old, boring collars.

 In fact, here's what Ricky had to say about his old collar:

Tricia doesn't live in Texas, so there was a lot of emailing back and forth.  I had some idea of what I wanted the collars to look like, but she was able to really bring it all to life and completely over-deliver!

We were so thrilled the day we got the package in the mail-- just about a week before Ricky and Lucy's 1st birthday.  How perfect is that?

So here they are~  (drum roll please!)

aren't they gorgeous?  and just perfect for my two?!

Ricky Ricardo's hand tooled congo drum is my favorite thing about his!

Lucy's girly hearts and flowers twinkle, just like her!

How snazzy does Mr. Ricardo look now?

And how sweet is this collar on Lucy?

We couldn't have been happier with the way these collars turned out.  The photos I took don't even do them justice!  They're really pretty unbelievable.  Just like Lucy and Ricky!

Rain!

Here are a few pictures of Ricky Ricardo after we returned from our run the other morning.  We got caught in the rain, which he didn't seem to be a fan of.  Sorry, Ricky.  I'll check Weather.com next time!

Happy Birthday, Lucy!

The little lady turned 1 yesterday!

She and Ricky have been eating birthday cookies all week from when he and I made the run to the pet store for his big day last week.  Lucy wants to keep her bikini body so we decided not to get any more cookies.

Instead, we went to one of her favorite spots- a park with a big field and some nice trails.  Fermin went with us, and we took her frisbee so she could catch some really long tosses!  She, of course, did excellent and it was worth enduring the cold-

When we got back home, she got a brand new hoof to chew on.  Of course, Ricky did too.  And then it was hours of relaxation while we all watched the Grammy's.

Celebrate!

Yesterday was Ricky Ricardo's 1st birthday.

Anticipation...is making me wait!

I wanted to make his day special.  We take walks every single day, and although I thought we'd take some extra fun walk somewhere for his birthday, well... it was a little cold, and neither he nor I really could get ourselves excited to get out in it.  So we just said, "Screw it!  Let's just go get some cookies and lay around all day instead!"

So that's pretty much what we did.

We didn't get lucky with cookies, but we did get a great toy!

First, we went to Lucky Dog Barkery.  I had just shoved a $20 in my pocket thinking that would be plenty for a few cookies and maybe a little toy.  But just the cookies there were right around $10 a piece.  Something that can be gobbled up in less than 10 seconds should not cost $10, should it?  That's a dollar a second!  (I'm super smart at math!) Since I knew they had equally fancy, although less expensive cookies at Pet Supplies Plus, I told Ricky I'd take him there for the cookies instead.

We did, however, find a cool toy that's also a pretty tricky food dispenser.

Here's a little video of Ricky getting to experience the new toy:

Since it cost right around $20, we had to swing by the house to get more cash for cookie shopping.

B-day cookies!

The fancy cookies at Pet Supplies Plus were only $1.35 which sounded like such a steal after our comparison shopping.  So Ricky got to pick out two cookies for himself and he even picked one out for little Lucy!  (I'm sure she'll return the favor on her birthday, which is in just a few days!)

It was a great day-  For a great boy!  I had know idea this time last year that he was being born!  In fact, I didn't even know I'd be in the market for new puppies only a couple of months later.  But life works out how it's suppose to work out, and sometimes the surprises are just so sweet.

Two very sweet surprises that came to me after a sad winter.

Happy Birthday, Dear Ricky!

My Little Ricky....

turns 1 today.