You Capture...Animals

Today's theme on You Capture is Animals. We used to have a dog - a beautiful, hyper-active St. Bernard named Daisy. She was adorable and needy and huge and slobbery and it broke my heart to give her away when we moved overseas. However, I found comfort in knowing that the family who got her called her "the daughter they never had" and took her on vacation with them! So...no pets to capture. I finally decided I would take the week off since I'm really not around any animals (and didn't have time to go take pictures of my parent's golden retriever)...and then I thought about Chuckie and Mr. Panda. And I decided to look at the "rules" slightly differently and show you two "animals" that have been in my life for almost twenty-seven years.

My dad attended a medical meeting and he brought "Chuckie" back with him for a certain little two-year-old daughter. Yes, that's me, sitting on his lap. And no, it's obviously not a new picture! Haha! My brother, sixteen years my senior, looked at it and said, "Is it a chicken or a duck? Guess we'll have to call it 'chuck' - half chicken, half duck!" The name stuck...and "Chuckie" became my favorite stuffed animal. And yes, I still have him.

  

And then there's "Mr. Panda" - a gift from my oldest sister (twenty years my senior) who was working as a missionary school teacher in the Philippines for several years during my early childhood. On one of her school breaks, she and her roommate trekked over to China to do some sight-seeing. Keep in mind that we're talking about twenty-seven-plus years ago when WWF (the World Wildlife Fund - nothing to do with wrestling!) wasn't quite as involved in saving endangered animals in foreign lands. My sister came home with the cutest little panda puppet - so soft...and made from panda fur. Yep. After almost 27 years of being played with and stored in not-so-friendly conditions, Mr. Panda is beginning to molt, but he's still around and he's certainly not going anywhere. Not exactly one of those things I would be able to replace - for obvious reasons.

And finally, for those who are curious about what our St. Bernard looked like - it's not a picture that was taken this week for this project, but it will have to do. Here is Daisy, our lovable gigantic mess of a dog.

She didn't like to get her paws dirty (go figure) so when it would snow or rain, she would stand on the dry(er) bench. She was kooky and kept us laughing!

The roof you see behind her - that's the dog house that Peter built for her. Big dog, big house. :-)

Make sure you check out the other links today @I Should Be Folding Laundry!