Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

Fifteen doggie pix, to be precise. Well, fifteen pix of three dogs.

My wife is allergic to dogs. Thus, all of her dogs have been poodles, specifically, purebred standard poodles. When we met online, she was still on her first, Daniel. Sadly, he was rather old and not doing well. He was having trouble eating and maintaining weight. He did not last long after we met. She quickly acquired Celeste from Arizona Poodle Rescue, who has been our source for all of our poodles since. They are an excellent resource for rescue dogs and all of their dogs are spayed or neutered and are chipped. They aren't cheap, but the dogs are healthy and it's a good cause.

ANYWAY, Celeste was given to APR by a breeder. She was a breed dog, AKC papered, but her mate died and afterwards she became rather cantankerous with the other dogs and the breeder just didn't want to put up with that and gave her up. Celeste, or as more properly known by her AKC name, Princess Dark Star, or Princess, was rapidly renamed. We will not own a dog named Princess.

Celeste was as black as the night, a very nice dog but didn't care much for little kids. She liked to wander around the neighborhood when it came to taking care of biological needs: she'd go to the front door and bark, we'd let her out, when she returned she'd bark and we'd let her back in. Worked pretty well.

She passed in late April of 2012, I don't remember exactly when we acquired her, but it was before we married, which was 2005, and we met 18 months before then, so it had to be in '04.

We wanted to have some time off without a dog before getting our next, and it worked well because we did a 7,000 mile, 7 week drive that year: up to Colorado, across to Maine, down to DC, back across and up to Milwaukee, back home via Chicago, Omaha, and Denver. Absolutely awesome trip.

And we acquired Dante, as seen here!




Two things about the photos. First, all are Click To Embiggen. Second, some, I don't know why, are not correctly rotated. If you click to embiggen 'em, they are correctly oriented. I have no idea what's up with them. *sigh*

EDIT: Turns out they were rotating in preview, but not when I posted. EXCEPT FOR ONE. Weird. I think I'll open a ticket, but I'll also try some CSS. Also provided correct attribution to three photos.

The story and photos continue under the cut. All photos by me, except where noted.
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