Swiss Lick Swissies

About Me

I’m Melissa.  I live in the Chicago suburbs.  I live with two Swissies, Gryffin and Indy, and Beowulf the Basset. We lost Alex the Beagle in April, 2009.

I started out inheriting Alex the Beagle in 1996 when my now-husband and I moved in together.  Then came Beowulf the Basset as a Christmas present.  At the time, we lived in a condo with no yard.

Two houses later, we have a nice, fenced yard and lots of space!  Because we didn’t think that Alex was long for the world due to health issues (uh, that was over 6 years ago), we started looking into adding a larger dog.  Dan did a lot of research and came up with the Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, aka the Swissy.  They are big dogs with a great, goofy personality and a slightly longer life span than other larger and giant breed dogs that we like, so we started looking around at breeders.

In April of 2003, Gryffin was born.  We brought him home in June, and life has not been the same since.  I am so totally in love with this breed.  I love Bassets and Beagles, but the Swissy is just the sweetest, most goofy dog, and I don’t crush them (when they’re full grown, at least) when I sit on them or use one as a pillow.  Although they do squirm.

Enter December, 2007.  I’m bored at work and I come across a forum that has a great game of Swissy Uno going.  I look through pages (sorry, boss, if you’re reading!) of Swissies young and old at work.  I forward the link to my husband.  We start talking, jokingly, about adding another Swissy pup to our pack.  Somehow this became a good idea.  Not sure how.  But we started speaking with the breeders we went to for Gryffin, and then we had 2 Swissies and 4 dogs.

In early May of 2008, we brought home Indigo aka Indy.  She is so very different than Gryffin, but such a sweet dog.  And evil.  And sometimes smelly.

Other stuff about me?

I’ve been married (to the same person) for over 11 years.  Why?  Because he’s hot and I love him.  And he tolerates me.

I’ve been a martial arts student, more specifically Hapkido, since 1998.  I am currently a second degree black belt, but Gryffin has a better double wet paw than I’ll ever have.

I like college football.  Yes, college.  Even more specifically, Big Ten football.  I’m an Illini, but root for the Northwestern Wildcats on weekends they are not playing Illinois.

I love reading.

More to come…