puppy love.

(first of all, i know it seems like all i do is blog about my dog, but that's only because all i do is blog about my dog.)

gilly was only 6 weeks old when we rescued her.

she had been abandoned in a walmart parking lot with the other pups in her litter pretty much right after birth. she spent a few weeks in a small, cold, metal crate-which she also shared with her siblings-until the day i walked in, saw her and fell immediately in love. 

(you can read more about gilly's adoption here and here.)

garrett and i agreed that kennel/crate training her was the best.

...until i brought her home and realized how much i just wanted to snuggle her all night. the thought of putting her back in a kennel seemed so wrong. she just came out of a kennel! she would hate me for putting her back in one! she needed to be loved. she needed to be snuggled.

but garrett knew  better.

and so she went into the kennel for the night. well, for increments throughout the night, that is. we set an alarm to go off every 2-3 hours and would take her down from our third floor apartment to go potty. it sounds crazy, but she was potty trained in a week and a half.

(and for the record, gilly loves her kennel now. loves it. she sleeps in there on her own, she goes in there when she's afraid of the vacuum and sometimes when she just doesn't want to deal with me constantly trying to love on her, she'll go in there because she knows i won't fit in with her. ...despite my efforts.)

at the time, garrett was the only one working and he had to be at work at 8 every morning. so more often than not, i would be the one to wake up with gilly in the night. and honestly, i didn't mind. i loved holding her on that trip down and up the stairs. 

but when it came time for garrett to wake up, i was just too tired to be up with him. so each morning he would would wake up, let gilly out, feed her breakfast and then pick her up, lay her on my chest and she would fall asleep with me until i woke up for the day. 

now that garrett is working again (and since i work out of our house doing hair and refuse to set my appointments any earlier than 10:00 am, he always wakes up before me.) 

and for the past few days my mornings have been so perfectly reminiscent of those days when gilly was just a tiny babe. 

garrett wakes up. lets her out. feeds her breakfast and then without his help, she trots into the bedroom, sticks her cold wet nose right on my cheek, jumps up on the bed and snuggles me until i wake up.

i think it's what perfect feels like.

love,

kate.

lyrics: oh, i guess they'll never know how a young heart really feels and why i love her so.