Meet the Paw-rents

Hi there! We're Jill and Joseph Palarca. We got married last April 19, 2008. It was a simple but beautiful garden wedding in Quezon City. Something that I have always dreamed of ever since I saw the film "Chances Are" starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Mary Stuart Masterson. And the movie's theme song "After All" fit our love story to a tee so we decided to use it as my bridal march tune.

My husband is a licensed veterinarian while I am a Comm Arts and Literature teacher in a university here in Davao City. I used to have a successful career in Media and Advertising but more on that on my future posts. How did we get from QC to DC? Again, that's another post reserved for the coming days. :-)

For now, let me just give you all a little background on how we became pet parents or paw-rents, if you may.

Having children didn't really occur to us right away because when we got married we were actually standing in as foster parents to my nephew who was only about 5 years old at that time. He was already under my care since he was 3, and Joseph, who was still my fiance back then already held the reins with me.

With Kean, our nephew, back in 2006

So we sort of had an instant family when we got married. And it was all good. My husband though he is a veterinarian and a big dog lover wasn't around pets as much as he would have wanted that time because he was still working in sales. He was a Sales Supervisor for a company that sold diagnostic test kits for animal clinics. A private practice was far from his mind during that time.

In the absence of a "pet" we came up with a pet project instead. Since I was already a volunteer for PAWS (Philippine Animal Welfare Society) and I was into video production, advertising, and marketing, we thought of the idea of putting up an online TVzine about the pet lifestyle in the Philippines. So in September 2009, we gave birth to MyPetChannel.tv.

We produced a lot of webisodes and events under that fledgling company. My husband and I started to work from home to run it. Unfortunately, the idea of a TVzine was kind of novel in 2009 and so we had a bit of difficulty selling the platform to advertisers. So despite being prolific, the company/website had to fold in 2010.

That was a painful year for us because not only did our "pet project" die, we also had to say goodbye to our "eldest son" -- my nephew -- who finally got his immigrant visa to join his mother (my sister) in New York City.

Gringa at 2 months old

With both our careers at a standpoint, our hearts hurting, and our marriage hitting some really big bumps on the road, only one thing made us smile -- our new puppy!

Gringa Girl was indeed a blessing in our married life. She's our first FurKid and she has changed our lives since then. This blog was finally created so that we can tell you our story starting from the day we became Pet Paw-rents!

So in the next posts, journey with us back in time as we do some flashbacks from 2010 until we reach present time. This blog will also be my husband's pet care domain. So aside from following our adventures you will also learn a lot of animal health tips from Doc Joseph himself. Hope you're excited because we are!

Until then :-)

--Mommy Jill--