Best Shot Monday: Isabelle

Isabelle

I've photographed hundreds of beautiful shelter dogs, but this face, this sweet girl, is the most beautiful furry face in the world to me. This is my Isabelle. She's going on 10 now, though thankfully she still acts like she's about five or six most of the time. She and I have had some very long talks about how long she needs to live, as I know that her little sister Molly will be completely lost without her. Molly doesn't take well to other dogs, but she sure loves her Isabelle.  Here's Izzy as a pup.  And here's Molly as a pup.

We've definitely made some adjustments to our dog life since we've been in Tallahassee.  At Home in Jacksonville, the dogs have the run of the ground floor, where we spend most of our time anyway. That's where my husband's man cave, my studio, and one of the the girls' play areas is.  So the dogs are inside with us there.  But here in our Tallahassee house, we don't have anything like that space. This house is a traditional one-story house.  To make matters more challenging, the back yard is not in any way connected to the garage like it is in our Home in Jacksonville.  So Isabelle and Molly are becoming quite the spoiled girls, according to my husband anyway. They still sleep in their crates, but now they are inside with us as much as they want to be. We just have to keep an eye on them to make sure they don't visit the Kitty Litter Cafe!

The cats have even adjusted to having the big dogs underfoot.  Zoey's always been awfully fond of Isabelle, but it's taken Pete some time to get used to sharing space with the dogs. In Jacksonville, the cats were on the 2nd and 3rd floors, dogs on the first.  Now we're all together on the same level! Praying Isabelle still has another 10 years with us!