Happy Pawlidays from the Urban Mushers!

We’re pulling a bit of an audible today, hope you don’t mind! I know we’ve been doing “blast from the past” stories on Tuesdays the last few weeks, but we will save that one for Friday this week! The last several days have been pretty crazy for us with family in town and several holiday events to attend. We hope everyone was able to enjoy the holidays and spend time with ones you care about, whether that be friends, family, or furry friends.

In the past, I’ve (Hannah) been bad about remembering to send Christmas/holiday cards out to family and friends. And last year was so chaotic for my family in December that I didn’t get a chance to participate in the Uglydogs card exchange program or Blair and Q’s holiday trail mail either.

(For those who may be unaware, the Uglydogs card exchange program is where members of the Uglydog community voluntarily sign up to send and/or receive holiday cards to other Uglydogs across the world. Blair and Q’s holiday trail mail is somewhat separate, but somewhat connected to this. Anyone can send their holiday cards to Blair and Q, and they will make sure your cards are carried by sled dog, and stamped to prove it, before they’re sent to their final destination. Both are super cool.)

Anyways, I decided I was going to make it a priority to send cards out this year. So of course, I wanted to include the dogs on our cards. I had the bright idea to try and coordinate photos with myself, Riley, Boo, and Pence in front of our Christmas tree.

As you can imagine, this was quite the challenge. Beth took the photos while my mom jiggled around dog treats above the phone lol. The “best” photo was chosen for our holiday cards this year, which I sent out to the people I was selected to exchange cards with and to our family and close friends. Our premium subscribers are also receiving this exclusive photo and holiday card as the quarterly mailing!

I don’t want to ruin the card for anyone who hasn’t received it yet, but please enjoy these outtakes lol. The dogs hope you like their holiday sweaters!

I hope you enjoyed these bloopers as much as we did! Have some funny outtakes from holiday photos with your furry friends? Tweet them to us: Riley’s Twitter and Hannah’s Twitter 

Side note - I thought the dogs would be weirded out by a giant indoor tree…and thought there was even the potential that they would pee on it. Luckily, I was wrong. Pence could not care less that there is a giant light up tree inside now. Recently, she has started booping a particular gold ornament with her nose. We think she might be seeing her reflection in the ornament. Boo doesn’t mind it either, but his chaos sometimes slides him into the tree and his wagging tail occasionally knocks ornaments off lol.

A day or two before Christmas, Pence was looking out my office window, which has a little three-foot Christmas tree on the ground next to it. A branch slightly touched her side, and she flipped out, knocking the tree over lol. The little topper and about six ornaments flew off. She felt so bad. It was an easy fix, no harm done. You may notice that this tree includes our dog ornaments - one for my first dog Nick (top middle, red dog house), who was a German Shepherd/Collie mix, second dog Indy (bottom right, santa paws), who was a Golden Retriever, and of course Boo (top left, paw print). Whoops - just realized we don’t have one for Pence yet!

Check back on Friday for the next newsletter, where Riley talks about how he was first introduced to mushing! Friday’s newsletter will also include another behind the scenes video for our Urban Mushers + subscribers.