The Pups

Six months (almost to the day) after Ryan and I were married in 2007 we flew to Estes Park, Colorado for his sister’s wedding.  On our way home at the Atlanta airport we were sitting across from a lady who was flying with her French-Bulldog puppy.  It was the cutest dog we had ever seen, so we immediately struck up a conversation and fell in love.  That night when we returned home we had “the talk” about the possibility of getting a puppy.  This was a completely foreign thought to me, having never grown up with any pets expect for a guinea pig named Dexter.  We found the cutest French Bulldog-Pug hybrid puppy online from a wonderful breeder in Kansas and impulsively had her flown in about a week later.  She was black with a small white patch on her chest.  She had one ear up and one ear down.  We call the ear up her French Bulldog side and the ear down her Pug side.  We ended up naming her Tulipai which is the Apache Indian word for ‘alcoholic beverage’ (beer) also known as Oakfa!  (The picture above was taken by Mandi White)

After three fabulous years with Tulipai we decided she needed a sister.  We again went to the same breeder and when she had another litter of French Bulldog-Pug hybrids we fell in love with Ninka in 2011.  She was the complete opposite of Tulipai. She was fawn with a little black mask and her ears were both half up and half down.  Having fell in love again, we made the decision to have her flown in.  The name Ninka was a completely made up (unlike Tulipai’s well thought of name).  It became a hybrid of Minka Kelly’s name with the ‘M’ replaced…hence, Ninka!  After naming our pup my friend Pama, pointed out that the ancient Sumerian matron goddess of the intoxicating beverage beer was ‘Ninkasi’…it was an unknown fate.  It also turned out that there is actually a brewery in Eugene, Oregon called the Ninkasi Brewing Company, who knew??!

So with two wonderful and very intense pups (‘pupperoni’s’ as i call them) our family is now complete!   We are not beer-aholics or anything, just appreciate some good beer and know how to have a good time with some good friends!  We love how random our pups name are and how they unintentionally wind together.  Life really is a before and after!