Celebrate!

 

My Sheltie Sasha’s best friend is Buddy The Wonder Cat, and he’s 10 years old today!

Buddy the Wonder Cat came to us as a feral kitten, 10 weeks old and weighing just 2½ pounds. Since he joined our household, we’ve discovered he’s a champion jumper (as long as he doesn’t have to jump higher than the laundry room counter). He’s capable of holding a grudge when he thinks he’s been wronged, and he mumbles and grumbles and flat-out worries whenever Sasha goes to the vet clinic or groomers without him.

He’s taught Sasha how to play hide-and-seek as well as the muffin tin game. Since I started teaching Sasha tricks, Buddy has turned into quite a coach. When Sasha achieved Novice level, Buddy promptly claimed the ribbon and dragged it up the stairs. (Upstairs is HIS territory.)

Our boy is an avid TV fan, too. He loves to watch The Detectorists, The Brokenwood Mysteries, and Midsomer Murders with the original Chief Inspector Barnaby. And he never misses the Westminster Kennel Club dog show  or a soccer tournament. (Sasha, on the other hand, sleeps through it all.)

When he’s not watching TV or chasing catnip treats, you can find Buddy tending to his collection of strings. He keeps them by his kibble dish and likes to drag them, one at a time, into his food dish or water bowl. His current obsession, though, is sliding and surfing across the oak floors on sheets of shipping paper.

In celebration of life ongoing, here’s a slideshow of the best of Buddy the Wonder Cat through the years.

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Celebrate!

Sasha is officially three years old today!

When we registered Sasha with the AKC via their Purebred Alternative Listing (PAL) program, we opted to rely on the veterinarian’s estimate of her age because the details of her life before she came to us are largely unknown. We chose July 4th for her “official” birthday and she’s now formally recognized as Ozark Summer Highlands Sasha.

We chose Ozark for our locale and Highlands for her heritage; we’re actually in the Ozark Highlands, so it’s a bit of a double play on that last word. We included Summer because she has a warm sunny spirit. And I wanted her call name included because she came to us with that, so including Sasha gave us a bridge between her past and present.

The PAL program is intended for purebred dogs of AKC-recognized breeds who, for various reasons, had not been registered with the organization. Registration means that Sasha is eligible to participate in AKC events such as Agility and Rally Obedience which both promote performance skills and opportunities for handlers and dogs to work as a team. If you’re interested in the PAL program, you can find eligibility details here. And if you’d like to learn more about AKC’s Reunite (a lost pet recovery program) and microchipping, click here.

Sasha enjoyed a smidgen of feta cheese with her morning meal and will munch on cucumber (a BIG favorite) at dinner time. We’ll round out the day’s celebration with backyard frolics and be safely indoors long before fireworks boom across the county again. Happy birthday, sweet dog!