 Well, hi there. It's Sandy Allnock and I am celebrating Gacha Day. That's the day that I got my two puppers. I have two of them and they arrived within 24 hours of each other. And I thought, while I do my drawing, I will tell you about their crazy story. The drawing, by the way, is done on Stonehenge paper with a two-toe three pencil. It's a mechanical pencil that has several leads in it to use. You'll see me click it from time to time to advance the lead. The story of the dogs. In 2016, I finally finished all the yard work that summer. I had to put in a new fence, which meant also building a retaining wall because the reason the old fence started falling apart was because the ground was uneven. So I needed to build that up with blocks and everything in order to make the next fence stable. And I wanted to do it right. So saved up a bunch of money, got all that done, had the whole thing re-landscaped because that tore everything up and everything was ready for dogs. And I started looking around. I wanted a shelter dog really bad. Just wanted to adopt one that really needed a home. And I was looking for a golden because I used to have a golden and I really missed her something awful. But nobody has goldens in shelters. I guess they're so easy to find homes for that nobody really puts them up for adoption in that way. And I didn't really want to go to a breeder. I didn't want to resort to that. So I thought, okay, I'm just going to look around until I find the dog that just jumps out at me that I'll know who's supposed to be my dog as soon as I see them in their pictures. So I was looking around at all kinds of shelter sites, local and national. And on one of the national sites, I saw this dog that just broke my heart. She was a skinny little black and white thing. And she looked so sad in her pictures. Oh my goodness, that poor thing. She just looked like she had had a hard life, even though she was really young and she was just her eyes were hollow. And I just wanted to hug her. So I inquired about her. They showed me some video of her playing at the place where she was being fostered. And, you know, she was she was getting along well. She was a very sweet tempered dog. And the people there had named her Vienna, because the only way they could get her to come to them was for Vienna sausages. She is still a meat dog, like regular cookies she'll eat and she'll be fine with. But boy, if it's a meaty kind of stinky dog treat, she's really happy with us. So she's still the same as she was back in the beginning. But they were all excited. That was going to adopt her. They were talking about how to fly her out here to Seattle from Texas. All that kind of thing was great. And then all of a sudden, they emailed and said the people who were fostering her had a friend who wanted her for a dog. They had met her and that was it. There was no opportunity for me to like bid on her or beg them like, hey, I fell in love with her already. Can't you do it anyway? So I figured, okay, she's got a local home. She won't have to go through the trauma of flying. So that'll be fine. And I started moving on, started looking again for more dogs. A friend of mine knew a breeder in Oregon and said, why don't you at least just go visit them? You can go play with puppies because she's got a litter of puppies right now. So I thought she's a known quantity. My friend is a dog trainer. So she knows people, you know, people that take good care of dogs. So this would be a good breeder, if nothing else. So I'll go look. It was worth a drive down to another state. Got to go see some beautiful countryside. And while I was there, I was playing with this whole bunch of puppies. They were so cute. And I got to meet all the mama Papa dogs that were there. And they were talking about which ones they were planning on breeding next. So I could see a little bit of what size dog I would get, that sort of thing, what color that the dog might come out. But as I was playing with the puppies, she mentioned that one of that litter. And she told me which one had been rejected. Somebody came to meet it and decided they didn't want him. And I said, well, why wouldn't anybody not want a puppy? He's so cute. And they said, well, he's a little busy. I didn't know what that meant at the time. They just said he was busy. And he was a little skinnier than the other dogs. He was a little smaller than them, because he was busy. He was looking at leaves blowing by or butterflies, and not really paying any attention to what he was supposed to be eating. So I was, you know, just a little ADD thing. And I thought, you know, I could handle that. That's no big deal. He's just a flighty dog. He's still a little flighty, by the way. But I decided to take him because I haven't forbid anybody should reject a puppy that cute. I couldn't stand it. So I agreed to take that dog. He wasn't ready to go home yet. I had to wait a few days. So I went back to my house and started getting everything ready. And I got the crate ready. And I was so excited. I was going to go pick him up on Sunday. I had all kinds of toys and treats and food. Everything was ready. And on Saturday, before I was supposed to go down there on Sunday to pick him up on Saturday, I get a call from the people in Texas. And they said, Oh, the adoption fell through for Vienna. So we're planning on flying her out. We're going to put her on a plane on Monday morning. And I was like, you're gonna what? But I didn't want to reject her like the whole idea of rejecting a dog that needs adoption just didn't seem right. So now I had a golden that I had just arranged the purchase of and I had Vienna and I had committed to her previously, but they didn't really give me a choice. They just said we're sending her. So I was gonna have two dogs. And that's just how it was going to be. So on Sunday, I took a drive down to Oregon and picked up little giallo, which is yellow in Italian. And picked him up. We drove home. He's just a nut. He's running all over the place having so much fun. Cutest little thing. Absolutely loved him. And then the next morning, I guess late morning, maybe around noon, her flight, Vienna's flight got in and I drove up to the airport and picked her up. And the two of them fell in love with each other as soon as they were together. It was so hilarious. They had no idea they were completely different sizes. Because Vienna was already 45 pounds by the time she got here and giallo was just a little handful of a puppy, little tiny guy at eight weeks. We don't know Vienna's age or birthday, but I put her the same year as giallo, but about six months earlier. That's that was just the guess. So her birthday I've decided is February 14. And giallo was born on July 20. And then they both arrived on September 10 and 11 that my house less than 24 hours apart. So we celebrate one gotcha day for both of them. The picture that I'm drawing is one of my favorite ways to wake up in the morning, which is the two of them piling on me to try to wake mama up. They're so sweet. I mean, they don't insist that I get up. They just want me to wake up and pet them. And usually it starts out with giallo and he you know, plops himself right down on top of me and squishes me with all his weight on me. And Vienna wants to get up to the front of the line, of course. And she is my Gumbi dog. I kind of call her my Gumbi dog because she can just kind of melt her body. And she just sort of melts herself underneath of giallo and shoves her head under him. So she kind of displaces him that way. And he just insists he's not getting removed. He's just not. So he sits right on top of her and squishes her and seeing these two faces right up in front of mine in the morning just is the best way to wake up. They are just so much fun. They they love each other. They love hanging out with me and we love going to the park together and playing together. And right now while I'm doing this voiceover, Vienna's sitting right beside me. And I'm just scratching her ears while I'm doing this voiceover, because that keeps her a little calm while I'm trying to tape. Otherwise, she's back at the window, either in the backside of the house or out front, just barking at squirrels and things. She's she is my guard dog. giallo is much mellower than that. He he's mama's boy, loves to hang out with me and loves to to snuggle and that sort of thing. But he's not nearly as barky, unless there's an actual like a big cat walking across the front yard and then he comes unglued. Vienna can just sense that there's something maybe a leaf moved. She gets all excited. And heaven forbid, a squirrel run across the fence. And they both go absolutely ape. But they are fun to have. They're they're really super, super puppies. And I still call them puppies even though they're four years old now. Can't believe they're four. Has it been that long? Anyway, the tool I was using just now for the blending, by the way, was a blending stump, just kind of moving some of the color around, doing a little bit of extra kind of shading around them to create some setting here. The two of them piling on each other. And that's about it. If you're looking for a dog, I highly recommend getting yourself a shelter pup, because they appreciate the love so much more than any other dogs, I think. Alright, I will get going. I will see you guys later. Happy gotcha day. If you want to make a donation to an animal charity in their honor, you're welcome to do that. Let me know about it. And I'll talk to you guys later. Bye bye.