Nearly every year, I take Christmas portraits of our pets. Sometimes they are pretty or cute, other times they are just funny. 

Jessie - We strongly suspect that she is a kelpie, although we've never done genetic testing for her. We adopted her when she was six months old in 2015. She's definitely our smallest dog, but my goodness does she have a lot of attitude. She sleeps in our daughter's room, and they do nearly everything together. She loves to play with tennis balls and lives for tug-of-war.

Loki - He was a rescue in 2020, and about six months old when we saw an ad about him and decided to bring him home. He walked into our house and right into my heart. He's definitely my buddy. He weighs about 90 lbs. and is a mutt through and through. We did do genetic testing on him and he's primarily Australian cattle dog and German shepherd. He's super sweet, and I'm hoping to do obedience training and possibly some agility with him next year. 

Natty - This is the baby of the family. She turned a year old in November. We got her at six weeks - probably the youngest puppy I've ever had. It's hard to believe how fast they grow! She's a German shepherd and around 75 pounds. She's super sweet but can be a little timid. That said, she's an amazing guard dog. She and Loki love to play together!

Jasper - He's our angel. We just said goodbye to him on December 10th, and our home isn't the same without him. We found him as a puppy in 2009 running on the side of the road and brought him home. He was such a sweet, mellow guy that loved food, gave true hugs, and was always happy. We were blessed to have him in our lives for 13 1/2 years. 

Hello, friends!
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I realize I haven't posted on my blog in a really long time. Honestly, I took it off my site because I found the process of keeping it up-to-date very overwhelming over the last year or so. In that time, I've also found that I've truly missed it. So I'm back, and I hope at least some of you are still out there. To start a new blog post off, I'm going to share the message in my latest newsletter. Then I'll be posting new content from then on. 

We've had quite the beginning to our new year.  

We got a new puppy for my husband's birthday. Shortly after that, we all came down with COVID one-by-one. Dealing with being sick and a young puppy who is getting up multiple times at night to go out or because she was hungry hasn't been easy! On top of that, both our daughter and my husband were sick for their birthdays. Our son is having some health issues in addition to COVID. 

We're all mostly feeling better, finally, but are still dealing with congestion and fatigue.
I'm so ready to get back to normal. Oh, and spring. I'm really ready for spring. Ha! 

Okay, enough about being sick. On to the new puppy! My husband named her Natty Gann, and we call her Natty. She's about 9.5 weeks old now, and fits perfectly with our family. We bought her to be my husband's dog. My dog, Loki, turned a year old in December. The two absolutely LOVE to play together. I really don't know how we would've made it through not feeling well if it weren't for Loki entertaining Natty so much. 
Natty is supposed to be a full German shepherd, but that didn't matter too much to us. I guess time will tell as she grows. We may do one of those DNA tests with her that we did with Loki because it was fun. But will wait a while for that.