The One With The 3-Legged Dog

Does this dog look familiar? She should...

.... its Copper’s sister!

While looking over the Helen Woodward website (where Copper was adopted), I found a “success story” about a 3-legged dog who I thought looked a lot like Copper. I was about half-way through the story when I came across a sentence that mentioned the dog’s siblings being Emma and Emmit. Wait a minute- our dog WAS Emma! After talking to the adoption center, they confirmed that the 3-legged dog, Savannah, did have the same birth date as Copper. And just like Copper, she’s super cute! Click here to read Savannah’s story and see a video of her and her progress.

She isn’t available for adoption yet, but if you have an interest in adopting her, keep checking the website to see when she does become available. We’d love for a friend or someone in San Diego to adopt her so we can visit!

Also, click here to see a photo of Copper and Savannah’s brother!

The One With The Mexican Table

Brad and I have been hooked on going to our local swap meet, Kobey’s, ever since we started looking for silver vases/containers for our wedding. Since our wedding has come and gone, we now visit the swap meet to find stuff for our house. (And occasionally we pick up more silver pieces that catch our eyes!)

One of our latest finds was a coffee table- that can only be described as “Mexican”- with metal fixtures and grommets. We thought it had some potential, so we brought it home and purchased a sander to help with the project. Here are the before and after pictures:

I’m still not sure it’s the perfect look/color for our living room, but I think it’s an improvement from what we had before. Plus, with only spending $30 + paint, you can’t go too wrong! :) (PS- the mirror and blue chest in the pictures below are also Kobey finds!)

Living Room Before

After

The One With Too Much Sea Water

Copper’s first experience at the beach happened at the end of August, when we took her to ‘Dog Beach’ in Del Mar. As soon as she hit the sand, she couldn’t wait to check out all the other dogs, people and new smells- but when her toes touched the ocean water, she instantly froze and backed up as quickly as possible! This coming from a dog who loves running face-first into the hose water! At the end of the day, she still would not go in the water (see picture below), but she did enjoy running around on the sand.

So, we took Copper back to the beach the next weekend to give it another try. She was excited when we first arrived, but still would not go in the water. At one point, while we were walking along the beach, a wave came up pretty high and trapped us against some thigh-high rocks. Copper tried to scramble for safety on the rocks, but couldn’t get up there fast enough before the tide retreated and she realized she was fine. The next wave came and she dug her claws into the sand and took it head-on (looking totally freaked), but as soon as the wave went back into the ocean, she again realized she was fine and that was all it took to get her into the water! She spent the next half hour running towards the waves and trying to bite and bark at the foam.

Later on in the day, when we tried to take her to a different part of the beach she refused to go back into the water and kept sitting/laying on the beach. Brad and I just looked at each other thinking ‘what the heck?’, but as soon as we looked back at her, she was in the middle of throwing up half the ocean and her breakfast onto the beach. Oh. That’s why she didn’t want to go back in. We of course did the responsible thing and buried her throw-up in the sand, with a large chunk of seaweed placed on top, then promptly left the beach.

This past weekend, we made our 3rd trip to the beach and I’m happy to report that not only did Copper go back into the water, but she also did not throw any up! Way to go Copper!

The One Where Copper Graduates

Our little trouble-maker graduated her 8-week puppy course with a B+ grade on her final exam! And she even posed for a quick picture with her graduation cap!

The One With The Fire

On Thursday, August 27, a brush fire started in the hills next to our home around 9:15pm. (See image above) Somehow, the two of us were oblivious to the 3 fire trucks and multiple police cars parked just outside our house until around 10:30pm when Copper started furiously barking at the front and back door. When Brad went to let her outside in the backyard, he instantly smelled the smoke and ran to the front door where we could see the numerous emergency vehicles packing up and leaving from our front porch. When we walked closer to the hills we were greeted by neighbors who explained that the fire was quickly and completely extinguished thanks to good weather conditions.

With the major fires burning in Los Angeles County, we can’t help but worry that San Diego will have another fire storm disaster like last year. Hopefully, this incident will be the only fire we have to worry about threatening our home, but just to be safe, Brad pointed out that we should lay out an emergency plan, which would include items that we pack in case we ever needed to evacuate our house.

We’re still working on that list, but out of curiosity, what items would you pack that you couldn’t live without?

The One All About Copper

We’ve wanted a puppy for a couple of years now, but neither of us has lived in an apartment/house that would allow pets. When we finally purchased and moved into our first home, we only had about 6 weeks until our wedding and would then be leaving on a 2 week honeymoon right after. So it made sense to wait to get a dog until we got home from our honeymoon and got settled in.

Well, our first weekend back, we adopted Copper Kate Carter!

We told ourselves we were just going for “a look” on that Saturday, June 13th, but then we found Copper (who was known as Emma) at the Helen Woodward Animal Center. She came from a shelter in Arizona and they guessed her birth date to be around April 1, 2009- making her about 10 weeks old when we adopted her. The shelter believes she is a boxer/blood-hound mix that will weigh around 40-45 pounds when full grown.

When we first went to meet her, she was VERY shy and would only come up to us after her “roommate” greeted us. If you’ve ever met Copper- this is SO unlike her now! She loves playing with her friends at puppy school and going on walks so that she can meet/jump on any new people & dogs she can get to!

We’re having lots fun raising her and have learned a lot about “parenting”- such as, we are not having kids for a very long time! So be prepared to see more posts all about Copper!

The One Where It All Started

My good friend, Annie, has been suggesting that I start a blog for awhile now. Apparently, she thinks Brad and I live an exciting life that has lots of stories and adventures to tell.

Either way, I’ve decided to give in since a blog seems much easier to maintain than keeping up with emails, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and all those other crazy internet sites that you young people use these days!

So here it is- our blog site- The Daily Carter!

Disclaimer: Contrary to the name, this blog will most likely NOT be updated daily, but I’ll make a genuine effort to post pictures and stories of all our latest events. Thanks for reading and feel free to email us anytime- we’d love to hear what you’re up to!