Closing out the Year on a High Note!

"We win! You win! Woos!"

So here we are on New Year's Eve, the last day of the year, contemplating where we've been and where we are going. Before the year ends, we would like to say thank you to all the wonderful friends we've made here, thank you to the awards bestowed upon us, and for some prizes we've won along the way.

"My turn to read it next!"

Thanks to Pets Blogroll, we were the recent winners of a great book, The Dog Who Couldn't Stop Loving, by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson. Currently, we are enjoying the read. Thanks, Pets Blogroll! If you haven't checked this site out (where you can win prizes! Yay!), please do so soon!

 

I'd also like to take a few moments to pass on the Stylish Blogger Award I was given by Facing 50 With Humor. Please stop by her site for some really funny, thought-inspiring writings! You won't be sorry you stopped by.

To accept the award, I need to select blogs I deem worthy of the Stylish Blogger Award and share some fun or interesting facts about myself:

1. I used to be an equestrian. I raised, rode, trained, and showed horses Western-style. I even rescued a homeless dog and brought him home bareback. A little Spitz named Max. I had a hard time getting my parents to believe that "he just followed me home," though. Guess the dog on the horse's back gave it away.
2. I made friends with a police drug-sniffing guard dog when I was about 10. There was a butcher shop a few doors down and I would get free bones and toss them over the fence to the vicious German Shepherd. The owner couldn't believe the dog didn't eat me, so he gave her to me when he closed the business. For some reason, my folks once again had a hard time believing that "she just followed me home." I just don't understand why. But of course she became part of the family!
3. I have never flown on an airplane. I did sit in the back of a Cessna once for a photoshoot of the student pilot. Does that count?
4. I love rock music and rock concerts. A tradition I have passed on and now enjoy with my daughter. My one Husky loves rock music too. He was weaned on it. 
5. I received my first camera as a Christmas present from my parents when I was five. I think it was called a Silly Camera, and it took real black and white Polaroid-like photos that you could do some cool distortions with. My career was launched!
6. I've always loved and have been around animals. We once had 77 baby chicks in our furnace room in our house in the city. Then we moved to the country and added more dogs, cats, horses, a bull, and a parakeet who loved to perch upside down on his swing. Sadly, he met his demise when he fell off his perch and landed on his head.
7. I raised a wild fox. My brother came across a red fox who had been hit by a car on a rural road. He found a nest of babies nearby with one surviving little baby. He brought it home and we nursed it with a baby doll bottle. My brother moved, and I cared for it until he passed. He loved to eat dog food, climb on my shoulder, and would make "ah-ah" sounds, so my two-year-old  niece named it "Ahh." (sounds like "at" without the "t.")
8. My favorite sport is walking my Huskies. Wait, what...? Who says that's not a sport???

Now I will be passing this award on to other bloggers, so check for a note from me over the next few days and then please

pay it forward and post this award on your website with a link back to your nominator (that's us, the FiveSibes!) and don't forget to share interesting or fun facts about yourselves and nominate your Stylish Blogger Award recipients! 

See you all next year!