We're so excited to bring you our first feature article! 

Get cozy, settle in, and get to know our great friends. 

Sara, Julian, & Maurice

 

My name is Sara Villines, and I am a 30 something health care professional living in SouthWest Missouri with my two amazing Havanese boys; Julian age 2 and Maurice age 1. If I could pick one word that has defined my life it would be "Compassion." When I was growing up, compassion is something my parents strived to instill within me... I was the child who wanted to donate my entire piggy bank to organizations like Feed the Children, and who gave my toys to the less fortunate. 

It was no surprise then when I graduated high school and immediately began volunteering my time for a non-profit in Haiti, where my parents had adopted three children just a year prior. What started as a volunteer project trying to find homes for three orphans, grew into a 501c3 charity with three orphanages, a school, and many humanitarian projects. Here I found my first career. From 2002-2008 I assisted with international adoptions and humanitarian aid until the economy crashed, and the Hauge Convention outlawed independent adoptions.

Health care was something I had never considered until a friend was able to help me find a job in the field. I started out working with individuals with developmental disabilities. Something just seemed to fit in my new field, and so I furthered my education in the medical field. I have worked in many different specialties, each one enriching in a different way. I think that is perhaps my favorite part of health care, the ability to learn, grow, and experience new things daily, all the while helping others.

Julian and Maurice each have their own unique stories of trials and tribulation. Julian is a pesticide poisoning survivor, and I rescued Maurice via Craigslist from severe abuse and neglect. It was going through these journeys with both of them that inspired me to launch HavaHeart as a way to pay it forward for all of the blessings in our lives... We want every dog, and their family to be as fortunate as we are. "...Freely you have received; freely give." Matthew 10:8

HavaHeart, opening on May 29, 2015, sells top quality homemade treats baked with only the best cruelty free and organic ingredients. We also sell boutique items, many of which are also hand crafted in our home. We take a holistic and homeopathic approach to meeting your pets nutritional and health related needs, because they aren't just pets, they're family... 10% of every purchase is donated to an animal related charitable cause. You can find us online at: www.hava-heart.com

When We Can't Go Everywhere

Hello all! Just in time for your summer vacations, we have something fun to share...our first printable! Yippee!!

Packed and ready to go!

As a conference & meeting planner my girl human, on occasion, finds that she cannot take me with her on her travels. When she must leave me we have a ridiculous (cute or perhaps crazy) pet sitter instruction sheet I take with me. 

Racing to the door of my pet sitter

As most crazy pet parents can attest, leaving their lovable furry creatures is practically impossible to do. Luckily, after several interviews, lots of research, play date evaluations, and who knows what else, we found the perfect sitter! This was no small feat for my girl human. Once we get my belongings together we update our pet sitter document with all relevant changes. Take a look at this one from last fall.

For your free printable PDF version click here. 

We hope this will help ease your human’s mind the next time you have a stay with your pet sitter. Good luck!

A Day in the Life of Seattle

Over the holiday weekend we took our first trip up to Seattle! Luckily it's only about 2 hours from Portland. We hit Pike's Place, which was ridiculously crowded, (not sure what else we were expecting on a holiday weekend.), had some yummy food, and just walked around the city. We walked about 5 miles so the Littles were exhausted on the drive home. But it was a great way to spend a Sunday!

The drive on the way up!

Dave and Bianca's first time at Pike's Place Market

The famous Seattle library. It was the main event!

Bianca's favorite spot to sit. #dangerousdriving

True love. Also, Polaroids are so fun!

Gigi was exhausted on the drive home and just wanted to be held. It was the best.

 Are any of our readers from the Seattle area?

And don't forget you can find us on Instagram and Facebook! We'd love to hear from you!

This Canine Community

Aside from the fact that we LOVE all things cute, cuddly, and canine; supporting friends and small business is dear to our hearts. One of the visions for this blog is to honestly get to know our readers and support them.

The body shop we’ve referenced on occasion is much more to us than just our last place of employment. Alpine Body Shop is our family owned and operated business for over 30years. I (the girl human) grew up there.

Everyday was "take our kids to work day"

This girl loves her tools

I remember putting our handprints in the concrete as the foundation was poured for the office. As I grew, so did my parents business. Anyone with self-employed parents can probably attest to the ownership and satisfaction we to take part in as a family.

Without writing an entire novel on the life of a child of self-starters, I’ll sum things up by saying that supporting local and small business means a lot to me.

You might be wondering what has to do with the Particular Puppy?  We’ve been fortunate enough to become acquainted with numerous small businesses through our dog community. We’ve often been able to give input and discuss with friends as they begin the journey of starting their own business.

As I watch and encourage those whom I’ve grown to care about, I realized that the community we’re a part of is a special one. We do so much more than post photos and “like” to display our support. We have evolved to become a different kind of family. We rejoice together in personal achievements, reaching milestones, birthdays are celebrated, losses are mourned and sorrow felt more deeply than I would have ever imagined. We share our dogmas…and this has been done through our dogs.

As humans we’ve created unique bonds through the act of displaying and sharing our animals’ lives.

That’s an amazing thing! We share so much together.

I realized that we know a lot about each other through the eyes of our beloved pets, but we don’t know the human behind it all on a personal level.

I think we can do so much more together by learning about the friends we’ve inadvertently made through our pets.

I’m excited to get to know the professions we have represented. It would be a dream come true to work with you professionally, brought together by our mutual passion!

I’m excited to show off the talents you have to offer, support you in your business endeavors, and simply get to know who you are as a person, not just the human behind the dogs we love.

Feature articles are underway. Send us an email to be in a feature post, we’d love the chance!

Throw Back Thursday at Mt. Vernon

 In honor of Throw Back Thursday here are some photos from when we lived in DC and took Bianca to Mt. Vernon - the estate of George Washington. The estate is on the Potomac river and has live animals, orchards, gardens, museums, and all sorts of cool things to see. When Bianca was a puppy we took her to see it and had a mini photo shoot. She's still adorable. It's still one of our all time favorite places!

Mt. Vernon - George Washington's estate

Bianca as a puppy

Tell us your favorite places to take your pups on our IG account or our FB page!

Secret Lab

The Knight Girls' Secret Lab 
aka: Home Office

 Gracie and I enter our office each morning at 6am, bright eyed and bushy tailed after a complete breakfast. Mmm...okay that might not be entirely truthful; sometimes we bring our breakfast to work with us. (And very occasionally we've been known to work from bed.)

Gracie spends the majority of her workday monitoring
 her girl human from under the desk. 

Working on her "Dream Board"

 Gracie: Warning that overtime might be approaching 

Perhaps the most important position Gracie holds is that of  CEA (Chief Executive Alarm).  She alerts for all important meetings. These include: play time, breakfast time, snack time, treat time, more bichon attention time,  "outside business meetings", and SO much more!

And we make this face a lot

This is what it looks like when we're having fun, and when we're overwhelmed, or frustrated, or really excited, or tired of Gracie's "alerts".

At the end of the day we love our job and our happy home office. Thanks for touring it with us!

The Quiet Game the Frenchton Way

We like to tease play with Bianca, but one game we particularly like is The Quiet Game the Frenchton Way. Bianca doesn't know the meaning of "playing quietly" and playing really brings out her spirit animal, The Pigeon. Sometimes we like to think she was a pigeon in another life and then graduated to "Dog" in this one. But you be the judge.

What's your pup's spirit animal? Tell us on our Instagram page!