Way back WHENsday: Our story, part 3.

I had a look at my wedding post yesterday and decided that it is high time to continue our story.

We had a lovely and relaxing honeymoon on the beautiful Comores islands. It was just perfect, completely out of reach of family and friends and like a dream come true. A real paradise and very romantic from a sunset cruise on a yacht to a beach dinner of caryfish by candlelight. The lake behind us is an old valcano crater.

We started looking for a house to buy soon after our wedding but only got the right place at the right price in the right area in August of 2001 and moved in on the 10th of October. It has always been my hubby's dream to have a Labrador and we decided that we could each get a dog of our choice, but we would do it about 6 months apart. I gave him the first option as my mind at that stage was not made up about which type of dog I wanted. We started scanning the newspapers for Labradors and on the 4th of November a little sand coloured furball ran straight into my arms at a breeder. We were lucky, it was a female like we wanted and not reserved by someone else. She slept in my arms all the way home and we became a family of 3. We named her "Moya" -meaning wind or spirit in Zulu. It seemed appropriate for a little dog that ran so fast. And it has proved itself very appropriate - she is an extremely athletic Labrador of the American breeding pattern and would have made an excellent gun dog if we had the knowledge and time to train her. We did train both our dogs with the clicker training method until level 2 and they are a joy to have.

I soon made up my mind to get a beagle as my choice of dog but as the time approached to start looking for my dog, I grew to love our Labrador more and more. What is not to love about a lab? Intelligent, loving and heaps pf character. So I changes my mind and started looking for a black or brown female - H decided that we wanted two girls. After extensive search H surprised me on the 28th of March 2002 (which happened to be the Thursday before Good Friday) with a little black bundle of fur. She was smaller and weaker than Moya was when we got her but immediately made her presence felt in the home. We named her Sibongile (or as we call her, Bongi) which means "To be thankful or grateful" in Tswana. It seemed apt to give that name to a dog that became part of our family in Easter.


So we had a couple of wonderful years, camping often (we have a very keen house and dog sitter) and also taking weekends and holidays often with the puppies. They became used to travel (Moya travelled to my In -laws at the age of 3 months - and 11 hour trip) and we had some great rips together. And yes, children were not on our minds at all - we after all decided not to have kids.

For some more Way-backs, head over to Cheryl's top play along.