A short history of my best family Christmas cards.

Updated to add new Christmas cards from 2015 and 2016.

I've owned and lived with Rottweilers since 1995 but the first family Christmas card didn't come about until 2001. It was a very crude and amateur attempt using a grainy picture taken with my first digital camera, a Hewlett-Packard. I actually printed this out and mailed it to my friends until one friend responded "That's your Christmas card?" I went back and hid in my cave for a few years with hurt feelings.

Here is another Christmas scene a year later but not a Christmas card.

December 22, 2002. Mocha and her father Nikko.

Then came my retirement, and a lapse in time and a whole new family of Rottweilers. By now I began to learn how to take better pictures LOL. 

Then I made this one in 2012, the best of our complete family.

But last year it became necessary to no longer include the two humans. It was not a good year for us.

But I didn't give up trying to have us all in the picture. This year, 2014, I tried once again but my original attempts were not very good as you can see. You can look at more examples of the outtakes for 2011 in the archives. http://livingwithrottweilers.blogspot.com/2011/12/making-perfect-rottweiler-christmas.html

This was the last year I tried to use real Santa hats with elastic chin straps. Every year since I decided it was easier and better looking to do a photoshop and add the hats.

Then I tried again with just the Rottweilers and this is the one card I really loved. And the photoshop Santa hats came out perfectly.

 Christmas 2014

Last year (2016) too many problems prevented me from putting a lot more time into the annual Christmas card project. For one thing this was the best of many attempts to get the right group shot and the only head that left enough room for a Santa hat was mine.