cocktails & confetti: and they call it puppy love.

juliet. jules. who-lee-who. julie boolie. julie boo. boo. stinky. these are all names to which my baby girl will respond. she's my child. and i love her. today, i thought i would write about how she came to be my lapshark. or, rather, how i came to be her person {we all know our pets keep us, we don't keep them}.

it's kind of a funny story.

back in may or june of 2005, someone i knew called to tell me he had just adopted a purebred teacup chihuahua puppy. i really think this he mostly wanted to rub it in my face that he had a teacup chihuahua, because i had always wanted a teacup chihuahua. either way. he called saying he wanted me to pick out a name for the puppy. i chose the name "hamlet."

wait, you say, aren't we talking about juliet?

why, yes. yes we are. i was told that the teacup chihuahua was a male. so i named "him" hamlet.

a few weeks, maybe a month, pass and i make a trip to tennessee where i get to see said puppy. the owner was keeping the poor baby in a cardboard liquor box, rarely taking it out, and basically mistreating the poor thing. i couldn't stand it. i told the guy {after begging and pleading for my parentals to allow} i would take the puppy home to virginia to house train it. that way it would not have to be kept in a cardboard box and not have to be yelled at for not being house trained. and i was to return the puppy to his original owner when i returned to tennessee for school in the fall. i was, afterall, to be staying on campus, which has a strict no pets policy.

so the pup and i travelled to virginia to begin house training. that's when we realized, hmm... this does not seem to be a male puppy at all. so, since "hamlet" had already learned "his" name, i needed to find a female name that sounded similar, to make it less confusing for the transition. the best i could come up with was juliet. so it stuck.

then, one fateful day, the puppy's original owner called me to say "hey, i don't want that dog back. you keep it."

what? i was supposed to be living on campus. no pets allowed, remember? but i couldn't just abandon poor juliet! what's a girl to do?

litter box training a dog is difficult. but we did it. juliet and i managed sneak in and out and to live in campus housing for a whole year without ever getting caught. sneaky us {so much for that strict no pets policy}.

and now, juliet is all grown up. weighing in around 10 pounds, she's definitely not a teacup anything. i'm not sold she's even part chihuahua. but whatever she is, i love her to pieces. she'll be turning SIX this coming april. we celebrate her birthday on april 26. seemed like a good date, huh?