Georgia: Animal-loving family dresses up their EIGHT pups in festive sweaters

GEORGIA -- Some people like to include their beloved pets in their annual family Christmas cards, but one Versailles, Kentucky, family is making their dogs the stars of the show.

Casey Eckert Kight, 31, her sister Kelly Eckert Furr, 28, and their mom like to stage elaborate seasonal greetings starring their very well-behaved pups - and they've been known to one-up themselves every year.

This Christmas, the family card features their eight combined dogs all posed around a doggy 'kids' table' complete with fancy china, lots of bones to chew on, and a festive red-and-green table runner. And all of the cute canines are wearing their Christmas best, of course.

The cheerful snap - which both Casey and Kelly have shared online and with their friends and family - features seven Labrador retrievers and one rescue dog, who they think is some sort of chihuahua-terrier mix.

Each of the extremely well-trained pets, who are named Honey, Bebe, Sadie, Sophie, Little, Belle, Gabby, and Ellie, are staring obediently into the camera while wearing holiday-themed sweaters.

In front of each of them is a tasty looking bone on a plate, and more bones are laid out on platters ready for the Christmas feast.

Not all of these pooches live in the same house, though. Three belong to Casey and her husband Josh, 35, three lived with her parents, and two belong to her sister and brother-in-law, Zach Furr.

Casey, a veterinarian, told Daily Mail Online that the expertly-arranged picture was actually pretty easy to stage.

She just had to pull out a chair, say a dog's name, and the pup in question would climb up and sit on the chair. Kelly then snapped the adorable photo.

'No one tried to jump on the table,' she added. 'They were so good.'

It's possible that that's because these pets, who are all aged two to nine, know the drill by now. The Eckert women have already staged a few similar Christmas cards with their animals, and Casey has even included her horses at Claibelle Farm in past snaps.

'The whole thing kind of started a few years when we did a nativity skin,' she said. 'Now, everyone always asks how we’re gonna up that one. So we always try to come up with different ideas.'

 

In the nativity scene snaps, three of the Labrador retrievers are dressed as the Three Wise Men, two are Mary and Joseph, and one is the angel Gabriel. A cat sits in a basket as the Baby Jesus, and the horses look on from the background.

Another year, they dressed one lucky pup up as Santa and the rest as elves, while the horses wore red-and-green decorations and reindeer horns in the background.

(georgianewsday.com - Dec 24, 2015)