Morning Sun Session

Poster Girls

Charlie and Copper - An Origin Story

Our black and yellow Labrador retrievers, Charlie and Copper, may live in a condo in downtown Chicago now. But their lives started out very differently.

They are from the great state of Arkansas...by means of a ditch on the side of the road. Found and taken in by Kyle's Aunt Jean and Uncle Jim. They were two tiny Labrador retrievers covered in tics and filthy. No tags and no one claiming them as their own, Jean and Jim cared for them. 

Jean and Jim's daughter and son in law, Brenda and Shannon, and grandchildren, Ty, Reagan and Cole, live next door. Not being able to resist the charms of these two lady pups, the kids determined that they must be named. Likely fans of the movie The Fox and the Hound, the yellow lab was named Copper. Going with a very different movie, the black lab was named Darth Vader. 

After searching and failing to find anyone who would claim these two as their own, it was time to find them permanent homes. Kyle and I had talked about getting a chocolate lab when we moved to Chicago together in a few months. Armed with this knowledge, Aunt Jean proposed a new arrangement.  They could be driven up to us and we could take them instead. Without having met them, we knew they couldn't be separated. It was either both of them or neither one. We saw just one photo and we knew we couldn't resist. 

They arrived just a couple days later and the photos dud no justice at all to how adorable they were. They were attached at the hip and utterly obsessed with each other. The first night with them, they were wrestling and sleeping on top of each other. From that day on, they've had us wrapped around their little paws. 

While we decided Copper was a fitting name for our bossy yellow lab, we knew we had to change Darth Vader's name to something more suiting a pretty girl like her. We landed on Charlie.