I’m up on the wall!

No. 1 and No. 2 decided that they wanted to look at me up on the wall, in addition to looking at me in person all the time.

A nice human came over, and she brought her young human and guess what, they have a phalene! A phalene is just exactly like a papillon except their ears go down instead of up. My long lost cousin!

Angel and me getting treats from the young human.

After the visit, pretty soon my portrait arrived and No. 2 stuck it up on the wall.

Very handsome if I do say so myself.

Woofs,
Willie

No. 1 here… the fabulous pet portraitist is Tamara Burnett.

No. 2 here… I am so glad that we had Tamara paint this picture. (It was my birthday present to No. 1!) After becoming acquainted with Willie, she mostly worked from a photo. When Tamara first brought the painting to us, it somehow didn’t look quite right. Then we figured out what was missing. There is a tiny spot on the left side of his nose, which was not really visible in the photo. We asked Tamara to paint it in, and then suddenly … wham! It was Willie! It was amazing to me that such a tiny detail could make such a big difference. I really appreciated Tamara’s willingness to work with us to get this keepsake just right.

Edited: March 14th, 2011

Agility

No. 1 says that she first learned about papillons when she saw one at a dog show doing something called agility.

The took me to a field with all sorts of things lying around in it and that was agility. I had to touch my paws to stuff, climb stuff, jump stuff, walk across stuff, crawl through stuff, generally do a lot of things that made little sense. But the humans seemed intent on it so I played along. There were liver treats involved, so that helped.

Back at home, we practice. It is much more fun. No. 1 lays her blankie rack down on its side and I jump over the legs.

Halfway across!

I jump, like the wind! I am agile!

It's so exciting, I must bark to the moon!

Now? Now? Now? Now?

I am too swift for your camera.

Woofs,
Willie

Edited: March 12th, 2011