Rosie's 8th Birthday

It's my sweet Rosie's birthday today, so I went and looked for some photos of her as a young'un.  We had quite a few but they'd got lost in the depths of our old photo management system, which was basically crap.  :) 

Rosie was bred by my mum.  Her bitch Tess was mum's girl and the dog was a Fellow called Cooper from the Eastern States that mum had met at trials and loved. She used chilled semen for the mating.

Rosie's mum, Tess.

 

Rosie's dad, Cooper.

 

It was a lovely match that produced a litter of really nice registered Labs that went on to be lovely pets and successful retrieving dogs.  I had planned on keeping a pup and spent a lot of time helping mum with the babies.  There were two girls in the litter, both black.  I had my pick, but at first they were pretty similar.    

Then, from about four weeks old, Rosie decided she was mine. She was a strong willed little miss even then.

Get me out of this puppy pen, mama! 

 

 I was a bit smitten.  :)

At seven weeks we brought her across from mum's house to our cottage a lot, though she went back and forth that last week while her siblings were still next door so she could keep learning her socialising as well. Buffy and Tam were both quite mature old ladies by then, but they looked after her really well, though Buffy was always the tolerant queen of the family. 

She really livened up all our lives.  
 

As she grew, we took her out to fun things like the beach and retrieving.

 

And for lots and lots and lots of lovely bushwalks.

She loved it when mama Tess had a litter of little sister and brothers.

She had her own babies.

  
 And she grew into a very beautiful dog.

She still is!

Happy birthday, sweet Rosie! (We've made sure of that with a trip to walk by the river and a stop at an ice-cream shop.)