Our "Love Story" inspired German Shepherd entry way art

Meet Trigger our idyllic German Shepherd-He was 10 1/2 when he passed away on Mitch's birthday in 2016. He was smart, loved people, especially our daughter Haverly (have-er-lee).

If you hadn’t already figured it out, we're German Shepherd people. Without Mitch having had his Shepherd, Trigger, and me throwing stick in an open field with my Shepherd, Monte, we may have never met.

The love story

Now, I knew within minutes of Mitch stopping that he would be the man I would marry. Even before I knew I would marry this man, I feared for his well-being which was currently at high risk.

Monte was a little protective of me and wasn’t great with men in uniform (don’t even ask how I already knew this). So you can imagine my relief when instead of me dragging Monte away from this officer, he was drinking water from his water bottle and acting like Rin-Tin-Tin or something. Rin-Tin-Tin.... Monte was not, in looks or his wild at heart behavior.

And she still has a nack for owning the craziest shepherds like our Freeway.He is a goof...

So as it turned out, Monte was that catalyst that brought us together. He seemed to have the same reaction to Mitch as I did, love at first sight. Right away we discussed needing our dogs to meet, and which one had larger ears which was of course Monte.

Probably Susie’s first win, I should have known then that it was the first of many…..

So the Shepherd's meeting would have to be just as wonderful as our idealic meeting, right? If you did, you guessed wrong. They barely tolerated one another, and hated, really hated, to touch one another.

Taking & Editing the Photos

So if you ask what would compel me to make a giant print of our dog to hang in our entryway instead of something useful like a mirror?

Like so many of you, we’re dog people, saying "Hello" with a woof somehow tells our story.

My advice for rangling your dog to actually take a photo like this is limited, because in the end I still needed Mitch to help me get him to hold still long enough to take a decent picture.

Eventually we got a couple of good photos which I took against our white entry wall so I could easily take the background out in Photoshop or Pixlr.

We picked Trigger as the subject because we knew he wouldn’t be around forever. But the type of dog he was really represented the type of people we are and like to be (yep I just compared our family to a dog). He was just as amazing as he looks, a dog that would take a bullet for you if need be.

Or snuggle with our daughter while mommy tries her hand at new born photography.

I didn’t want his whole face in focus so Mitch took the pick between the face in focus and his nose in focus. In the end I ordered the 20 x 30 print with his nose in focus on gloss paper. I wouldn’t do gloss again because we always have too much glare from our front door. Trying to take pictures of it for you all to see in place was significantly difficult.

Reality Check

The print didn’t end up perfect. We reused and older frame that has a few digs and scratches, and the glare from the gloss is annoying. I couldn’t be happier and felt the need to get this project finished, even if it wasn't perfect. Our Trig-Man passed away not 6 months later. Had I have waited after the initial idea popped up, we may not have this amazing reminder of him. And, if Mitch hadn’t had his Shepherd we may never have met.

I'd love to hear a bit about how others have honored beloved pets, leave some comments below please!