biscuit's space | The blog of photographer Katherine Carver

Mar 9

Loving: Winter 2023

Below are a few things I am loving during this winter.

1. Yellowstone — We have enjoyed this series. Doug and I began watching Yellowstone when we returned from Christmas. It is a great show, and we have all but watched the fifth season, which we plan to start this week! The horses are beautiful and views are amazing, along with a good plot and storyline.

2. Lululemon Shirt — I love this shirt. It is light weight and very comfortable, a very soft cotton. I have this shirt in several color, and I highly recommend it.

3. Trader Joe’s Beef Jerky Dog Treats — Victory loves these treats from Trader Joe’s! I always try to keep some in the house for our sweet girl!

4. Chunckies — Alex really enjoys these paint stick that we discovered from a friend around Christmas time. She has made some beautiful art with them, and they are much less messy than regular paint, for the win!

5. Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad — This book is one of my favorite memoirs. I love reading memoirs, and this books was so well written, which chronicles Jaoud’s story to battle a rare cancer, along bone marrow transplants, and her reintegration back to living in the world outside of the “bubble” of the hospital. I really enjoyed reading this memoir. It really makes one so grateful for his/her health after reading this memoir. I highly recommend this book, if you enjoy reading about other people’s stories.

6. The Perfect Bar — We recently discovered the Perfect Bar, and we love them, including Alex. They are 100% made with natural ingredients, they are organic, and delicious. Alex’s favorite flavor is the peanut butter with dark chocolate chips. We love them, and eat them often from our fridge!

You can view other things I love here!

Feb 28

Photographs: Rehoboth Beach and Dewey Beach Vacation

This blog post is over six months late! There has been so much going on as of late, and, consequently, I have been quite behind with editing our family photographs. I hope to eventually catch up on my editing of our family images and make our family yearbook for 2022.

This past August, we took our third trip, with our girls, to Rehoboth Beach and Dewey Beach. (You can view our first trip here; and our second trip here. And, we cancelled our 2020 trip to Rehoboth Beach due to COVID.) Doug, fortunately, found another beach house to rent that would allow a small child and a furry family member! We were not far from both beaches! Alex loved the ocean and she even found little friends to play with on the beach, as she is so outgoing and social! She also enjoyed building in the sand with Doug! Alex also enjoyed using her boogie board as well, that she got at the beach last summer! Victory had a great time as well, she absolutely loves walking on the beach in the evenings, so much so, she did not want to leave the beach when it came time to leave!

We figured out a rhythm to our days, which went something like this: we woke up when Alex got us up, which was early; we all had breakfast; got our swimsuits and sunscreen on and packed up and headed to Rehoboth Beach where we stayed, and Doug walked to the Boardwalk to get our lunch each day, and we stayed until the late afternoon; then we got ourselves cleaned up and ready for dinner and we usually went to one of our two favorite places — Dewey Beer Co. or the Iron Hill Brewery; then we got Victory and we all went to Dewey Beach for a long walk, watching the sun set, which Victory always loved, along with getting ice cream; then we came home and got Alex to bed; and, then, we rested for a little bit.

We were not permitted to take Victory to Rehoboth Beach, but she could still go to Dewey Beach, thankfully! So it worked out perfectly! Victory has been to Dewey Beach several times before. Victory was absolutely in seventh heaven on the beach! And, Victory even let Alex walk her on the beach, again, in the evenings, shown below in the brief video! It was so sweet! We were also very fortunate for good weather on our trip.

Some images from our trip are shown below! We are really grateful for our time away together with our girls! We have many wonderful memories!

Here is a video of our girls at the beach!

Feb 23

Who Wrote the ‘Rainbow Bridge?’

My Mom recently shared in interesting article about who actually wrote the ‘Rainbow Bridge.’ I had no idea myself, who had written it for animal parents. The ‘Rainbow Bridge’ has touched so many lives and has brought comfort to so many animal parents who have lost a beloved furry family member. It turns out that he author is Edna Clyne-Rekhy, an 82-year-old Scottish artist and animal lover. Until recently, she had no idea that the poem she wrote over 60 years ago–to honor her dog, Major–had brought comfort to so many others.

Clyne-Rekhy’s authorship likely would have been lost to history were it not for the tenacious work of Paul Koudounaris, an art historian, author, and cate owner in Tucson, Arizona. Koudounaris has spent the last decade working on a book about pet cemeteries and fequently encountered references to the “Rainbow Bridge” in his research, and he was curious who actually wrote it.

The poem’s popularity, he discovered, was launched in February 1994, when a reader from Grand Rapids, Michigan, sent a copy of “Rainbow Bridge” that they received from their local humane society to the advice column Dear Abby, which was published and noted that if anyone reading can verify the authorship, to come forward.

However, nobody came forward, and after that, “Rainbow Bridge” seemed to be everywhere. Starting in 1995, Koudounaris found records of 15 separate claims filed under the title “Rainbow Bridge” with the U.S. Copyright Office. He compiled a list of around 25 names he found to have any connection with the poem, and he was left with one: Edna Clyne-Rekhy.

He has found Clyne-Rekhy’s name after seeing reference in an online chat group to an Edna “Clyde” from Scotland who allegedly wrote the poem when her dog died.

When Koudounaris finally reached out to Clyne-Rekhy in January, he found out that Clyne-Rekhy’s story began in 1959. She was 19 years old and grieving the loss of her Labrador Retriever, Major. “He died in my arms, actually,” she recalled in a call with National Geographic.

According to Clyne-Rekhy, she cried and cried after Major died. Clyne-Rekhy’s mother suggested she write down her feelings. This is when the “Rainbow Bridge” was born.

The text went like this:

According to Clyne-Rekhy, she said, “It just came through my head, it was like I was talking to my dog–I was talking to Major. I just felt all of this and had to write it down.”

Clyne-Rekhy still has the original hand-written draft of the poem. When she showed it to Koudounaris, he immediately knew it was real.

Koudounaris suspects that it must have been passed person to person until it lost its connection to its original author–and eventually took on a life of its own. Clyne-Rekhy spent years in India and later moved to an olive farm in Spain–a path that may help to explain why she was not aware of the poem’s growing popularity in the U.S., Britain, and beyond.

“‘Rainbow Bridge’ provides the missing piece for people who have had to live with this anxiety that their animal is not good enough to deserve an afterlife,” Koudournairs says. “It gives us a reason to hope.”

Clyne-Rekhy says she plans to be reunited with Major and her subsequent pets, whose ashes she has kept.

“We’re going to be scattered in the North Sea,” she says.

*Image Credit: Painting by Stella Violano.

Feb 14

Happy Heart Day!

Happy Heart Day! We celebrated Valentine’s Day a little early, this past weekend, with Alex and Victory! They are quite the pair! I am so grateful for our beautiful girls!

I hope you have a great day celebrating with the ones you love.

You can view last year’s Valentine’s celebration here.

“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.” —Maya Angelou

Feb 7

Family Photo Yearbooks

Last year, I decided to make family yearbooks in order find a way to keep all of my favorite edited photos organized chronologically, by year, since becoming a family of four. (Printing all of the photos became too cumbersome.) However, I still print photos that I want to frame for our home. Even though it was quite a bit of work, I am so pleased that I made these family yearbooks for our family to enjoy and for Alex to have someday! I refer to these books as a “collection of life.” I used Blurb to make my family yearbooks; and I used archival matte paper with an image wrap. I made family yearbooks for the following years: 2018 – 2021, 240 pages each. In the coming months, I plan to make our family yearbook for 2022, as I am a bit behind on finishing editing family photos from 2022. I highly recommend making these books yearly, and Blurb does a really nice job, and there is a lot of flexibility to create your own templates to create and design a book that will enjoy for years to come. Most of all, it is really nice to revisit and edit the year to capture family memories all in one place, in one book! (Additionally, you can view the book I made of Alex’s preschool art, a way to preserve her artwork, here.)

Feb 3

1 Comment

Eleven Year Blogiversary!

Today is the eleven-year Blogiversary of the blog! I can’t hardly believe it! It is extremely difficult to believe that eleven years, over a full decade, has already passed by so quickly! The time moves so quickly, these days, and I often wonder where the time goes. Many things have changed, but some things remain the same, fortunately. I am grateful for this little space here.

If it were not for our beloved Biscuit, I am not sure I would have ever started blogging and I know that I would not have started my long-term photography project, for which Biscuit and Victory are my inspiration. Biscuit was such a blessing and gift to us. Biscuit permanently changed our lives in so many positive ways and he sent us our precious little rescue sheltie, Victory, who we adore and love, shown below! And, coincidentally, Victory is the same age (we suspect as she is a rescue dog) as the blog!

Thank you for reading this blog for however long or short you have been visiting! I truly enjoy creating content for the blog to share with all of you, and I hope that you continue to enjoy visiting and reading the blog!

Thank you so very much!

Jan 27

Alaskan ‘Puppy Bus’

Have you heard about the Alaskan ‘Puppy Bus’ that went viral on Tik Tok, recently? If you have not, it is absolutely adorable. It mirrors having one’s human child get onto a school bus! The dogs literally walk onto the bus and get in their seats by themselves and then they get buckled in! You can view the heartwarming video here!

Mo Thompson and her husband, Lee, run the bus and they take the dogs on off leash on walking and training trips via their business, Mo Mountain Mutts! After picking up the pups from around their small town of Skagway, Alaska, their minibus makes it way to trail walks, hikes, and swims.

You can read more here.

Photo Credit: Mo Thompson

Jan 18

The Paradoxes of Creating

I love this passage about creativity and paradoxes from Elizabeth Gilbert’s book entitled, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. Hopefully, it will help you create!

“Creativity is sacred, and it is not sacred.

What we make matters enormously, and it doesn’t matter at all.

We toil alone, and we are accompanied by spirits.

We are terrified, and we are brave.

Art is a crushing chore and a wonderful privilege.

Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us.

Make space for all these paradoxes to be equally true inside your soul, and I promise—you can make anything.

So please calm down now and get back to work, okay?

The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes.”

Here is Alex’s first portrait of her and Victory together, a real gem! We always encourage her to follow her creativity, where ever it may lead! She is so open and free while making her creations, and I wish we all could be more like this!

Jan 9

One Little Word 2023: Joy

I hope you had a nice Holiday! We visited with family, we had some down time with our girls, and we got some sleep and rest, which was so nice. And, I cannot believe our little girl is turning four-and-a-half-years-old this week! She is growing in every way and she loves learning, she is incredibly creative, and she is curious about everything, which I hope never goes away!

It is a new year, which means there has been much talk about fresh beginnings. For me, I keep things simple and I select a word, an intention, for the year, and I try to really embrace the word for the year, which feels like a theme or mantra for the year.

I have reflected on my word for this year: joy. Last year, I chose the word: present; in 2021 the word grace; in 2020 the word bliss; in 2019 the word embrace; in 2018 the word peace; in 2017 I chose relax; in 2016 I chose present; in 2015 I chose flow; in 2014 I chose trust; and in 2013 I chose the word create. The idea of picking an intention has worked well over the past few years.

I have nothing against resolutions (or goals, or plans, or to-do lists), but for me, I have found the most impactful way to embrace a new year is to pick a word — just one word, intention — to keep in mind.

As 2022 came to an end, I know that things were really hectic and busy in 2022, on many fronts. I want to fully embrace joy this year! We have so much to be thankful for, always, and we are looking forward to a new year together. “The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.” —Thich Nhat Hanh

For me, it is an easy reminder to take whatever small steps I can to create clarity and feel better. For anyone similarly overwhelmed by resolutions, I recommend the practice of a New Year’s Word. Plus, since it is so simple, and you can change it at any time.

Happy New Year!

Dec 20

Happy Pawlidays!

“I think dogs are the most amazing creatures; they give unconditional love. For me, they are the role model for being alive.” — Gilda Radner

Happy Pawlidays! I wanted to thank you so very much for checking in over the past year — I am very grateful.

Below is the front of our Pawliday card (the back of our card containing text is not pictured), along with our matching envelopes using little photo seals of our beautiful girls, Alex and Victory! And, unfortunately, custom stamps are still no longer permitted by the Post Office. (You can view our previous Pawliday cards: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). Sending our Pawliday card is one of my favorite parts of the Holiday season! This is my way of sharing our Pawliday card with you. It has been an exciting year and we have so much to be grateful for. Thank you for reading this blog for however long or short you have been reading. I sincerely enjoy creating content for the blog to share with you.

I will be taking a break from the blog to enjoy some down time with family, and I plan to be back to the blog sometime early next year, during which I will have some exciting news to share! Meanwhile, if you are in a blog-reading mood, you are warmly invited to visit the archives — the links are shown below. Warmest wishes to you for a safe and Happy Holidays!

Dog Related posts

Dog Rescue posts

‘Dog-Centric’ Artists Interviews

For Artists posts

Photography posts

Personal posts

Victory Related posts