A Double Dog Happy Birthday: Dolly and Tyler!

Today, November 29, two of our canine kids are celebrating birthdays: Dolly the Weimaraner turns 13 years old, and Tyler the black and tan Dachshund turns 7 (at least we think he does). Tyler and Dolly always cuddle and today's blog is filled with pictures of them doing just that as we celebrate their birthdays! 

DOLLY'S STORY:  We adopted Dolly as a 3 month old pup from the former Wolf Creek Weimaraner Rescue of Knoxville, TN (it's no longer in operation) in March 2005. She was one of a litter of 6 that our friend Amber Keirn (who ran the rescue), took into the rescue from a shelter in Atlanta (yes, a breeder dumped week-old puppies in a kill shelter, but Amber drove down and rescued them). 

ABOUT DOLLY - She's the smartest, most intuitive, caring, obedient, loving , gentle, laid back Weimaraner you'll ever meet. She loves doing agility after dinner (we practice after dinner in the living room during the winter, outside in the summer) with Tyler! She and I (Rob) know exactly what the other is thinking.  For instance: Dolly has taught me (Rob) to refill her water bowl with Fresh water (she likes it less than 2-3 hours old, and who doesn't?) by standing next to it and staring at me!  Dolly loves chewing on nylabones (and the like) and tearing stuffing out of toys. She pushes blankets off at night, because she gets warm and she loves her brothers, Tyler and Franklin. 

TYLER'S STORY: Tyler came to us in December 2012 as a foster dog through Coast to Coast Dachshund Rescue (CCDR). Because we work with the rescue, our friend Donna Gerhauser who is a regional manager for CCDR called us and asked if we could somehow get Tyler (not his name at the time) from a kill shelter in North Carolina. We managed to arrange his rescue and transport to us in Maryland through someone we knew who was driving down there. 

TYLER'S ARRIVAL:  When he arrived he was about 1 or 2 years old... we think. There was ZERO paperwork on him. All we knew is that the shelter tested him for illnesses and determined he was heartworm positive!  (We thought that an untrained dog with a bad illness meant that his previous "parent'- really not a parent was atrocious and the people he lived with before were barbarians.).  
SOLVED A MYSTERY OF HIS PAST- We learned that he hates bearded men and people wearing black pants. So we believe a bearded man who wore dark pants abused him in his long ago former home. 

We actually had to keep Tyler crated for the first week or two, until he closely bonded with DOLLY.

TYLER'S BIRTHDAY- Since Tyler had no known birthday, and he bonded with Dolly, never leaving her side, and eating, sleeping, playing and even walking right next to Dolly, we gave him Dolly's birthday of November 29th!  We also realized that we HAD to ADOPT HIM... so we did. (Franklin and Dolly were 8 yrs at the time, and Sprite was 16 yrs). 

Family pic at Halloween; Tom, Franklin, Dolly, Rob, Tyler

THE BEST TAIL-WAGGING AGILITY DOG - We put a lot of training into Tyler, and soon Every day he wakes up wagging his tail and it doesn't stop. He's obviously never forgotten how thankful he is to be loved... and he makes us laugh and feel so loved daily. We took him to obedience school and 2 years of agility classes. He got so good at agility, Tyler taught Dolly at home and they do it together! Tyler loves toys and takes most of them out of his toy baskets and spreads them all over the floor (Tom wants him to put them back!). He barks at other dogs (we're still teaching him not to) and he's fiercely defensive of us, too.  But his tail is always wagging, and he is always ready with kisses every day.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DOLLY AND TYLER!