Furry Friday Link-up

I'm super excited to be linking up with my bestie/favorite blogger JG from Me and My SoldierMan for the very first Furry Friday Link-up. Click on the link below to join in all the furry fun...

I thought I'd use the Furry Friday Link-up as a good excuse to take pictures of more than just our two-legged children as they have most definitely overtaken the dogs on the family totem pole but as usual the two-legged children have completely monopolized my time this week and no new pics happened (of anyone) so I thought I'd just us this week to introduce the two best not-so-little dogs in our life...

Balak (a Rhodesian Ridgeback-best. breed. ever.) who was named Balak because Ridgebacks are rough and tough (although AWESOME with children). The name Balak has a Hebrew root meaning of "destroyer" and since Ridgebacks-named such because of the ridge of fur along their back that grows backwards are also known as "Lion-Killers" because they were originally bred in Africa to protect farms and families from lions, we thought it would be fitting. In fact, a single Ridgeback is said to be able to take down an orangutan alone. I don't doubt it because when Balak really runs, you can see all the power in his muscles. It would be intimidating if it wasn't for the fact that Balak is the single laziest, most apathetic, least dominant, excessively emotional dog I have ever met which is why we call him Bubba more often than Balak.

Translation: "I WANT TO GO TO BED. NOW."

He's not allowed on the bed...yeah, so he threw a fit and pulled all the bedding off the guest bed.

Bubba loves us but I'm pretty sure he loves comfort more. He's the 90lb dog that will refuse to get into a vehicle in the summer if the a/c isn't running. The big, bad Lion-Killer doesn't move an inch  and when you try to pick up the beast to force him in, he taps into his inner civil-disobedient protester and spreads eagle. All four paws go in all four directions and block you from pushing him in. We now just turn the a/c on and let it cool off before getting him in. He's a special dog for many reasons but mostly because he was our first born. I bought him for my husband's birthday shortly before we got married nearly seven years ago. A couple months later, we decided we needed another dog (read: Bubba loved Joshua more than me and I wanted a dog too) so we rescued Murray (a husky/yellow lab mix...we think)...

Oh Murray. How to describe Murray? Insane. That about sums it up. Long, long story short...we rescued Murray after he had been SEVERELY abused, starved and then eventually abandoned. He fought to live and we fought to teach him that he was safe. The first four months we had him, he would pee out of fear if Joshua stood up too quickly or unexpectedly walked into the same room Murray was in. He never fully got over his fear of baseball caps or hangers which we now assume were the things used to beat him the most. It took two years before a scar on his nose healed. We'll never know if the scar came from a beating or from when he literally chewed his way out of the abandoned house that his previous owners had dumped him in when they moved to Florida. He had a rough life his first few months but once we rescued him, he loved us...well, he loved me. He was MY dog. He would have done anything to protect me but he never really accepted anyone outside our little family. In fact, he frequently scared the crap out of strangers-to-him that came over. He tolerated Joshua and loved Bubba too but he adored me until our son was born. Actually, Murray's affection started to change even before then...

I should have seen it coming but I didn't until our boy was about two weeks old. I was tired so the fresh laundry was piled up on one side of the boy's crib while I laid him down for his first nap in a crib (we kept him in our room and until this particular day, he had napped in his swing, bassinet, or our arms). I left his bedroom door open because I wanted to hear him if he woke up while I started dinner and then I heard the noise I'll never forget. I now know it was the sound of Murray jumping into the crib. He had apparently and thankfully looked before he leapt and landed perfectly on the fresh load of laundry, curled up and had decided to sleep next to the boy. From that day on, if the boy was alone in his room, the door was shut but as soon as I opened it, Murray was right there. No matter how many times I scolded him not to get into the crib, he couldn't stay away from his boy. The feeling was obviously mutual as the boy's very first word wasn't Mommy or Daddy but Murray. They loved each other endlessly and when we unexpectedly had to put Murray down two years ago while Joshua was away training, something in our family broke. We still consider ourselves a two-dog family because that's just who we are but it's taken until now to even consider getting a new dog. Murray was MY dog. I'll never replace him but I'm starting to open up to the idea of having another.