The name Alfaroo comes from Alfie, our Shar-Pei.  She was adopted from Homeward Bound in Northern California with the name of Sally.  We weren't really fond of her name and neither was she.  It took a while but while watching T.V. one night we saw the show "Alf" and realized our dog looked just like Alf.  We named her Alfie but jokingly call her Alfaroo.  When we were looking for a business name for our online business we couldn't come up with anything so we decided to call it Alfaroo until we could come up with something better.  Well, 5 years later and Alfaroo is still our business name.

Our other little adoptee is Makese (pronounced ma-keys), as in where's my keys.  I always used to loose my keys and would walk around the house asking the dogs we had "where's my keys".  When we adopted our Golden Retriever from the Humane Society she was a stray that nobody had come to claim.  Since we had to name her, my husband laughed at me and said why don't you name her "my keys".  We took her to the vet's office and they asked her name.  I told them it was My Keys and they wrote it down as Makese.  Sad Update:  Makese passed away suddenly in October of 2008 at the age of 8-1/2 years old.  We miss her terribly!

Here are some pictures of our girls having fun.  There are also pictures of our garden and pond.  Enjoy.  
 

Makese at 6 months old.  Now, she can hardly fit between the couch and the coffee table long ways.

Our first time swimming at the lake.

"I want the ball but I can't reach the bottom.  I'm getting out".  Alfie hates swimming.

Here's the girls with Mike.  Mike was another member of our family.

Mike passed away in August 2006.

Our first house.  We had two greenhouses.

Here is our greenhouse with shade cover and our two little ponds.

We had koi and they got too big for the little ponds so we dug the two ponds out and created one large pond.

The pond looks great.

When we sold our home in 2006 the new owners said it was the garden that sold them on it.

2003 - One of the reasons we wanted to move is because of the horrible grass weeds that were taking over the garden.

First grape leaves of spring.

Praying Mantis by the pond at night.

Here is the pond we built on our 1 acre lot.  It measures about 20' by 28'.

We had a backhoe dig the basic shape.  Then we lined the inside with cinder blocks.

There is going to be a waterfall on the top.

We put pieces of mesh between and over the cinder blocks then pounded rebar into the middle of the blocks.

We filled the blocks with cement.  The picture above is the first step in creating a fake rock wall surface.

This is the most time consuming part.  We literally threw the concrete mixture on the wall to make it stick.

As the concrete built up we were able to start forming it with our hands into rock looking shapes.

After the waterfall and the wall below it were done, we lined the bottom of the pond with old carpeting.

After we lined the pond with concrete we put in a liner.  The liner we chose has a 30 year life and is pet nail resistent.  It won't puncture if one of our dogs goes swimming.

Pick the hottest day you can to lay in the liner.  The heat will help the liner lay flat.

I am impatient and didn't want to wait to fill the pond.  It took about five hours to completely fill.

I've had this koi for over 10 years.  He was in the pond at our old house but was getting too big.  We had the new owners of our house care for our fish over the winter so we could get the pond ready. 

© copyright 2004-2009 | alfaroo trading co. | all rights reserved