Before Amos and I were even married, he made a rule:
“You can’t have a dog our first year of marriage because you’ll pay more attention to the dog than to me.” I’m not even going to say he was exaggerating.
Just as we celebrated one year of marriage, I was on the search for a puppy to add to our little family. We knew we wanted to adopt, so I would cruise shelter websites and text Amos photos of dogs. No. No. No. He didn’t like any of them. If you know Amos, you know he’s not going to settle for anything normal. This dog had to be unique.
I came across a beautiful tiger-striped dog online named, you guessed it, Tiger. I wanted to reach through the computer and squish her face. I text Amos a photo and he said, “Oh no…” because he immediately knew she was the one! Tiger had been abandoned at a gas station and in the pound for 2 months when we went to meet her. Very telling of what she’d be like in the future, she just wanted to smell the cats when they let her out of her pin to meet us. We loved her sweet demeanor, and boy, did she have a look of her own. As we left the pound, all the dogs were barking, and Tiger just sat there looking at us. She totally stole my heart, and we brought her home a few days later.
We renamed her Nikita because honestly, you can’t have a tiger-striped dog named Tiger. That’s just lame. Nikita is one of our fave snowboarding brands, and it has given way to many nicknames: Kita, Keets, Keety Peety (Munchkin Moo), etc. And my dad calls her Sugar. Isn’t that the cutest?
On a typical day, you’ll find Kita laying in her bed at the studio as we work. She’s THE queen of maxin’ and relaxin’. As much as she loves to lay around, her absolute favorite thing to do is explore new places and sniff everrrrrythingggggg. We go on a lot of adventures together. Last I checked, the “Kita” album on my iPhone had 236 photos, so she’s also a well-documented dog.
Here’s proof that Amos was smart to implement that rule our first year of marriage.
Don’t worry, I DO love Amos more than I love Kita. Otherwise, our business would be named Carly Loves Kita. Hmmm. That does have a ring to it. If only she had opposable thumbs … :)