Show us your life - Pets

I'm excited today to be linking up with Kelly's 'Show us your life' post all about pets.

Our pet is our Golden Labrador named Casey. She is a girl and she is almost 11 years old. We got her after we had been married for 2 years. I grew up with dogs and loved dogs and knew I always wanted one when I got married. Then I married my wonderful husband who did not grow up with dogs and did not like dogs and did not want a dog. *grin*

So we talked about dogs and I even dragged him to stores to look at dogs, and there were times we left those stores with me in tears because I wanted a dog so bad but he just wouldn't agree. And then one day we talked about a compromise. He wanted a motorcycle and I wanted a dog. So we agreed that we could each get our wish.

One day I saw an ad in the paper for pure bred lab puppies for sale. So I told Bob that we should take a ride to just go 'see them'. Well as you can imagine we took one look and fell in love ... and we came home with an 8 week old puppy that day. She was the most adorable little thing when we got her. We had so much fun playing with her and snuggling with her. Bob even began to love her and she quickly became his 'baby' - who woulda thought that he could love a DOG so much?!

And she was {and still is} spoiled - slept on our bed, allowed on the furniture ... just spoiled!

Then of course our kids came along. Casey definitely took a back seat once babies arrived. I admit that we didn't pay her much mind and didn't play with her and give her attention like we once had. It's hard when you have a baby!

She's getting pretty old now. She has a lot of health problems, she has more and more accidents in the house, she gets more sickness and infections and we think she might have cancerous tumors. But she's old. So we take care of her, make her comfortable and make sure to medicate her when needed. But we won't be paying for surgeries and biopsies and things like that. It's just too costly when she's already so old. Sorry if that sounds too harsh but it's the reality for us for now.

But we do love her. She's the sweetest dog ever. She was always VERY gentle and protective of the girls. She still loves to jump on our bed and snuggle up. Someday when she is gone I know we will be very, very sad.

Here are some pictures ...
This is pretty much what she does about 99.9 percent of the time - SLEEPS! Basking in the sun in our yard ...

Oh yeah, did I mention that she loves water?? Walk by a stream or lake or river and she will jump right in - doesn't matter if it's freezing in the winter. She loves to swim. Here we were on a hike and once she saw the water Hope could not hold her back!


Go check out Kelly's Korner to see more adorable pets!