As I warm up into this blog, it's important to me that I first capture a few of the dogs that make my life so wonderful before I start delving into my new furry friends!
And so with that, I must spend a little time talking about my roommate, Chloe.
Chloe is a Retriever mix. She's around seven years old, but you'd never be able to tell from her herding abilities when she gathers up the other dogs at the park like a pack of sheep. Chloe was rescued with some of her puppies from a puppy mill in West Virginia. While at the shelter in Connecticut, her adoption profile noted, "she was so pretty, she could be a model", and since she's become my photography model, I must say that I completely agree.
Chloe can most accurately be described as my boyfriend's owner. She's incredibly smart, affectionate, but sometimes stubborn—and he sometimes refers to her as, "his ornery daughter." It is very clear that she has him wrapped around her paw--and this is incredibly evident when you hear Andrew talk about the one and only time she ever went missing.
The first summer that Andrew had Chloe, his parents came to visit him in rural Connecticut, and brought their new dog Josie. They left Josie with Andrew for the night while they stayed at a nearby hotel. The next morning, Andrew took Chloe & Josie on a walk through a cornfield near his apartment. Chloe, who was normally good at being off leash, was doing a good job of following along.
Since Josie is an anxious dog, Andrew was preoccupied making sure she was alright, and hadn't noticed that the ever-rebellious Chloe wandered out of sight and meandered into the bushes. Since this wasn't the first time she had wandered and came back, Andrew put Josie inside his apartment and went out to go fetch Chloe—but she was nowhere to be seen.
After searching through the woods for several hours, calling her name and squeaking her favorite toy (fun detail: a green pear toy from a fruit salad set), Chloe was nowhere to be found. Andrew passed the word around to all of his neighbors to keep an eye out for her--one of which planted a terrible thought that someone possibly found and kept her, since it had sadly happened to his dog. The more Andrew thought about this, the more it made sense—Chloe was kind, sweet and super approachable, and so as the hours ticked by he started thinking it was true.
Laying awake all night next to the door with a bowl of food, Andrew explains how he started to prepare for the next day:
"I had a rough idea of where she might have ended up; there was a small neighborhood on the other side of the wooded area where she went missing. It wasn't a great neighborhood—full of the kind of people who would gladly take a free dog. I prepped and dressed for my little sting operation, fully prepared to kick in doors like I was Liam Neeson."
Luckily, Andrew didn't have to unleash all of the physical fury that a Web Designer possesses, because about an hour after his patrolling the streets, the local shelter called, and said they found her.
Teary-eyed and speeding to the pound, he was reunited with his ornery daughter, and thankfully she hasn't left his sight since.
Full Name: Chloe Campion
Nicknames: Miss Chloe, C-lo, Bubz, Bubba, Wheezy Jefferson (she has allergies and snores like a freight train some nights)
Favorite Toy: Her stuffed Platypus—which has Platypus eggs inside that squeak!
Fun Fact: Not afraid of anything, EXCEPT having hanging ID tags on her collar—which is why she now has an embroidered collar.
