[fauxpasta]

My boyfriend and I are celebrating a year living in our house next week, and our family has changed quite a bit since then, after my boyfriend first fell in love with the breed and bought our two beagles.

Mister Spock grew from a tiny, roly-poly 10-week-old pup to a 22-pound hound right before our eyes, and little miss Bones has... well, she's not changed physically all that much from when we first got her, to be honest: she hasn't put on as much weight or gotten quite as solid as Spock has. Nor is she even that much taller. But she has grown a bit, whether we have really noticed the changes or not, and we celebrated her first birthday today. Sniff!

To those who don't know her back story: She's come a long way since she came to us from a pet store at age 5 months, after spending 3 months of her young life in a glass display case - not potty trained, poorly socialized, extremely dominant, a terror to the other puppies (according to a member of store staff, who spilled the beans and opened my boyfriend's eyes about pet store animals after we got our pup and who has since left the store).

And Bones was a little wild those first couple of months. But she has improved so much in the 7 months she's been a member of our family: bringing Spock out of his shell, making friends with our former roommate's enormous husky/lab mix, learning tricks, almost mastering potty training... whoops.

There wasn't a big celebration tonight, but the dogs did get a bath yesterday (a long overdue one, as they hadn't had one since before our air conditioner was out of commission for a month), and we did pick her up a zebra toy at the pet store tonight, in addition to buying a 35-pound bag of adult dog food. She and Spock have managed to partially de-stuff the new toy in the 3 hours they've had their teeth on it. And I've promised to bring both the dogs to the pet store on Saturday so they can pick out special treats.