Happy gotcha day to my baby girl, Kira. We rescued her one year ago today when she was just a 5 month old little puppy and boy has it been a journey. I never felt my heart expand so much and feel so much love towards a tiny living being covered in fur. That’s not to say there were a lot of challenges along the way this first year, with lots of moments where I thought, “What did I get myself into….” But thankfully, after one full year of life with Kira, we’ve got the hang of things around here with her in our lives and now I can’t even bear to think about life without my little baby dog. Literally, my heart breaks just at the thought…
When I think back on this past year, I think about all the challenges we got through. I went into becoming a dog mom thinking it would be all fine and dandy (my sister’s dog had pretty much a doctorate in doggy obedience so assumed it would be the case for my dog too). When we got Kira though, we quickly discovered that she was skittish, fearful and had pretty bad separation anxiety. Oh and an extremely sensitive stomach / GI issues to boot (which did not help at all with trying to potty train her!). This past year we worked so hard on all of those issues and made such good progress with Kira. I remember when we first got her, we would try to take her to the dog park a few times a week to help socialize her and desensitize her fear of other dogs. To cope with her separation anxiety, we ended up taking her to doggy day care for the first few months of having her and worked on desensitizing her to our departure cues. We watched her like a hawk for months and months and took her out for potty trips every hour because for some reason she just DID NOT UNDERSTAND potty training. We would try to take her everywhere with us to help her get over all her random fears and try to show her all sorts of people, environments, etc. My workplace is dog-friendly too and I took her to work often despite the fact that I wouldn’t be able to leave her alone for meetings and she would bark at everyone who came by my desk… those were stressful days. But she’s made so much progress on ALL those fronts! We’ve accepted that she will always have some form of separation anxiety and will always probably be wary of strangers, but she’s ours and we love her just the same!
Here are some pictures of when we first got her!
We found her through Wags and Walks here in LA at one of the adoption fairs at the Grove. They picked her up from the South LA shelter just a few days prior. I remember she arrived late to the adoption fair and once I saw her, I knew I had to meet her! After she jumped right into Andrew’s lap there, the deal was pretty much done. This was the dog for us!
Doesn’t she look so sad? Poor girl, wonder how long she had been living in the streets of South LA 🙁
Kira last year when we first got her — our true Christmas miracle 🙂
And………….Here is our little Kira now! Healthy and happy! Her coat changed colors to become more white.
She’s loved making good friends in our neighborhood — here she is with one of her best friends, Minion!
She’s also gone camping with us a few times this past year! She did amazing! She saw snow and the ocean for the first time this year too.
And now we’ve come full circle to one year since we got her. Here are some of her best holiday pictures so far. 🙂
Kira’s first holiday pawty at her friend Quinn’s house! She got all dolled up for the occasion.
Kira being cute at home in her Santa outfit. She absolutely LOVES wearing clothes! It’s too cute.
Kira, thank you for coming into our lives. You’ve taught me so much about what matters in life. The love you show me every single day is forever with me. There will always be a little Kira-shaped hole in my heart forever and ever. Love you, Kira!