The Jill and Darla Story

The french sisters are quite adorable in so many aspects. Despite the fact that we have way too many dogs in this house, I can fully appreciate each one for who she is. Or he, now that Jack ranks among us.

Our sweet Darla is vivacious, outgoing, mischievous, a born leader, and fearless in the face of change and new things. Her sister, Jill, is a solidly round dog, a definite follower, timid on occasion, so willing to please, gentle, and at times a bit overwhelmed with the changes that have been thrown her way. Although being a french bulldog, nothing intimidates these dogs too much. Not that they're so fearless and brave, they're just way too curious to sit back and let life happen an inch in front of their nose without the overwhelming urge to stick their nose right into life.

So to include these girls into our culture, I bought them matching Christmas sweaters. I roughly judged their size to be about the same, based mostly on the fact that the store only had one size available. Jack already has a holiday sweater, and I was envisioning the photo of the dogs in front of the Christmas tree, wearing tacky knitted sweaters, and looking like they were happy. Much like the holiday photo of my kids. It would be fun. After they learned to sit, of course. And stay. But hey, I have a month to work on that.

I put the sweaters on the girls when I got home from the mall. Darla's red contrasted nicely with her black brindle and she looked snappy indeed. She knew it, too, and pranced quite happily around the house looking like she owned the place. Jill, however, is a bit more portly than Darla. Her sweater was a tad small. And by "a tad" I mean that she looked very much like a sausage in a casing.  The poor dog was humiliated, and nobody even told her that she looked bad. A girl just knows these things. Jill refused to walk. Suddenly her legs were broken. She army-crawled across the floor, hoping to rub off whatever was stuck on her, while also trying to find a place to hide herself from the eyes of the world. Egads, if the paparazzi should see her looking like that!

It's evident that one dog is adjusting a little better to things around here than the other.

This morning, after letting the girls out to go to the bathroom, Jill dutifully found a place to relieve herself while Darla played suck-up and rolled around my feet. I brought them inside, fed and watered them, took them back out to empty themselves after eating, and watched Jill do just that. Darla, however, was pretty sure she wanted back inside the warm house. The frost-covered grass was just so cold on her wee, pampered feet. Darla promptly came inside, waited until I was up to my elbows in cleaning the kitchen, and peed on the Christmas tree skirt.

It's evident that one dog is adjusting a little better to things around here than the other.

When I get that holiday photo of the frenchies sitting under the tree in their sweaters, Darla will be sitting on the pee stain.


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