Who's this Cooper dog anyways?
Most of you are probably coming to this new, shiny, crazy blog we've embarked on from Instagram, and have been enjoying photos of our silly girl for some time now. But maybe you don't know the origin story of miss Cooper, and how she came to be a medium-sized mutt who thinks she's the queen of Brooklyn (and isn't exactly wrong). If you're new to us, or if you've ever wondered, let us tell you how a small black pup named Ika from Alabama became Cooper, in Brooklyn.
Photo courtesy of Will Ferman
Two years ago, almost to the day we're writing this, my boyfriend and I stumbled upon Cooper on complete accident.
We had been looking for a dog for over a year but were waiting for the right one- we knew they would choose us. After borderline stalking Badass Brooklyn adoption events, and still not having found that dog we couldn't walk away from - although we wanted many of them - we visited Bideawee's Manhattan shelter to see a fluffy maybe-Aussie mix named Lindsay. As we entered the shelter, we saw the dog we came to see walking out with her new family. We decided to look around anyway-we'd come all the way from Greenpoint after all! Walking down the hallway in this sea of dogs barking, jumping, and pawing at their kennels, was this sweet black lab-looking mix laying quietly and patiently, looking up at us with beautiful big gold eyes. as if she had been waiting for us and it was about time we had showed up. We learned she was a 1-year old mutt who had been transported from a shelter in Alabama, and recently arrived in Manhattan from Bideawee's Westhampton location. Impeccable timing.
Within ten minutes of bringing this pup out of her kennel for a meet-and-greet, she had chewed our adoption application, knocked over a treat jar (she's always been food motivated!) and gnawed on the bench we were sitting on. She was perfect. We left the shelter distraught over what to do, but decided to sleep on it. A few bourbons in that evening, we knew we were in trouble. This was our dog. We emailed the adoptions coordinator just shy of 2am with our decision and waited, half-thinking we'd never hear back. But we did. Less than 24 hours later, we were walking Cooper home from 38th and FDR , over the Williamsburg bridge to our apartment in Greenpoint and never looked back.
Cooper's shelter photo from Bideawee's Website
About a year after adopting Cooper, we decided we needed to find a way to give back to the rescue efforts that gave us our amazing dog. So we began fostering! Cooper has been an amazing foster sister to 12 pups looking for their forever home, and has been dedicated to teaching them all kinds of skills a dog needs to be a part of a family: how to wait quietly in the crate while the humans are gone, how to jump into a giant tote bag and sleep through the commute to work on the L train, how to wait patiently in "place" while dinner is being prepared, and how to beg like hell to lick the rest of your ice cream from your bowl. She has a knack for tolerating everything from the spiciest of puppies, razor teeth and all, and the grouchiest of senior chihuahuas. Through fostering, we've found such a wonderful community of dedicated loving people- more on that in a later post, though!
Cooper and our first 9 fosters
We wanted to make this blog after getting so many questions about life with Cooper in the last two years. Everything from fostering, to training, to the treats and gadgets we use comes up. Rather than send piece-meal messages on Instagram, we thought it'd be great to keep everything in one place that's a bit more friendly to long-form text. So thanks for joining us! We hope we can provide you your weekly dose of silliness, with a side of helpful information.
