There are a precious few of you who have said that you look forward to the calendars that I make up each year. This year, my three annual calendar—Kahala Morning Dogs (our canine friends), Kahala at Dawn (sunrise photos), and Our Kahala Cats (featuring, well, you know)—had to be expanded to include a Kahala Morning Dogs v2, to accomodate the new dogs we’ve met this past year, as well as those we now see only irregularly.

These are published and available online from Lulu.com. *Link updated and hopefully fixed!

This year was more complicated than usual. After sorting through about 24,000 photos, I came up with a selection of several hundred of the best dogs, and similar numbers of Kahana sunrises, and almost as many of our cats.

Then, as I scrambled to get the calendars finalized and submitted, I had to add a “v2” of the dogs to accommodate more of our canine friends (and some great photos!). And, despite several different lists that I kept updating to keep track of which dogs would be included in each of the two calendars, I ended up with two dogs that somehow got overlooked. So I had to create a “private” version, which swapped out two dogs to make room for the two that had been missed.

When we first started our daily walks at dawn about 25 years ago, Meda came up with a term to describe the process of meeting people who were out walking their dogs, learning the dogs names, and then circling back around to get the people’s names as we got to know them. “Animal-mediated friendships,” was her fine sociological term. No one minds if you stop to praise their dog, and that creates a natural “hook” to a get to know the dog’s humans. And everyone enjoys seeing their dog in the annual calendar!

The top photo is the cover of Dogs v1, featuring the dogs we meet most mornings. The second is my Dogs v2. And then there are the Kahala sunrises! I would have posted the cover of our cat calendar, but I don’t have a copy of that photo handy. It’s on the list at Lulu.com, though.

Anyone interested in knowing which dogs appear in which calendars, just send me an email and I’ll fill you in.