One of Kylie’s favorite things was a road trip! We went all over.. From New Jersey we went all up and down the east coast, and from Colorado we would pick a direction and just go. The destination was not nearly as important or exciting as the journey.

That was especially true on a spontaneous jaunt to Roswell, New Mexico where Kylie made some interesting new friends.

Anyway, as you can imagine the drive got very boring, miles and miles and miles of nothing (actually you can’t imagine). Kylie doesn’t do well with boring.. fortunately her imagination kept her from staying that way. She invented a game.

She was riding in the back of a little Honda Civic hatchback and she started putting her paws up on the back of the driver’s seat so she could see out the front, and she would wait… Then when there would be an oncoming vehicle, she would get ready – ready to attack! Growling, and posturing, she would get louder as they got closer, then as they sped past she barked visciously and pounced against the backseat window and “chase” them all the way to the back of the car, feverishly jumping on and climbing over the bags and pillows and what not in the hatchback, and barking at them behind us for awhile! She went nuts!! Then she’d “reset” and come back to the front wagging her tail, waiting for the next one.

This went on for hours, although she would skip some cars for no apparent reason. Well, no apparent reason to us anyway, clearly the game had rules we did not understand. We tried joining in a couple times but mostly we didn’t do it right and she would look at is like we were the crazy ones!

It certainly made a boring drive entertaining, just like Kylie made every boring day entertaining!

We miss that noisy little dog so much!

On another awesome autumn adventure with Kylie we drove all over New England. We went to upstate New York, and all the way up to Bar Harbor in Maine, it was really beautiful. And along the way we stopped at Dog Mountain, Vermont.

It’s home of artist Stephen Huneck’s gallery, and a dog chapel where we got Kylie’s photo with this big dog sculpture. Everybody loves this snapshot

Our first visit to Royal Gorge bridge in CO, world’s highest suspension bridge – and yes, Kylie walked across it, which allowed us to get this awesome photo!

In case you were wondering where Kylie encountered such a tall tortoise, we were at the very famous Colorado Gator Farm. Actually its not so much famous, as practically unheard of.

We were there because our friend and former neighbor,  Kelly, was visiting us from Jersey. (Kelly used to call Kylie her “little meatloaf”) She had requested that instead of the normal touristy stuff during her visit to Colorado, we do ABnormal touristy stuff – you know, roadside oddities and the like. Well that’s right up our alley so went to among other odd things along the roadside, The Colorado Gator Farm. It was quite a drive and quite a surprise when we got there to see a sign on the door that said “Dogs Allowed.” (And this was one of the few places we weren’t going to complain about not being able to take her.)

Kylie very much enjoyed the Gator Farm & Reptile Park..

Yes that’s a real (real big) alligator just on the other side of the fence, and Yes, she’s barking at him!!

We called her gator bait for the rest of the week!

Just noticed that the picture featured on bing.com today was of Carhenge.

Guess who’s been there?!..

It was one of our spontaneous road trips. And while we had a good time, we wouldn’t necessarily recommend driving several hundreds of miles out of your way to see it! (And since it’s in Nebraska, it is pretty much out of the way no matter where you’re going.) Surprisingly it’s really not as exciting as you might think.

Luckily for Kylie, it was all about the journey – always!

One of our favorite things to do in the summer as a family was to go to the drive in movie. We would throw a futon mattress and a bunch of pillows and blankets in the back of the crv pack up a bunch of snacks and head out nearly every weekend.

Kylie loved it, though she was more interested in the stray cats that roamed the drive in, than whatever movie was on the screen, so for her it was always an action adventure! She would growl, in that low, threatening, jack russell terrorist growl when the cats (or sometimes kids) would come near. And if they kept coming she’d break into a bark and then get shushed, but it was so funny! Then she would remain vigil as long as she could until she got too sleepy.  Sometimes we’d explore during intermission (sometimes even during the film), and you can imagine how intriguing the smells were.

She also especially enjoyed the “movie snacks” because we also packed treats for her! And of course she also got to share the popcorn, or nachos, or whatever we got when we would visit the snack bar.

It didn’t matter to us what movies were playing  either, in fact we watched some pretty crappy movies. It was just the most fun form of affordable family entertainment, where we could all just be together.  It was about the experience! And like everything else we did together, it was always fun for us just to watch Kylie experience things.

And it often was quite an adventure, between cats, and bats (yes, bats), swarms of moths, smokers, and noisy teenagers, cold, hot, rain or shine – well not shine that really wouldn’t work – we always had fun, because we were together.

We miss you Kylie, and miss taking you to the drive in.

Alternate title for this post “Kylie Hates Golden Retrievers”…

On one of our first big road trips after moving to the mainland, all three of us went on a trip to Boston! It was the first time any of us had been there so it was very exciting. Especially for Kylie with all the new sights and smells and all the Golden Retrievers!

It was presumably the first time Kylie had ever seen a Golden Retriever, or as we call them, the Toyota Camry of dogs, and for some reason she developed an instant dislike of the breed.

We were in a nice little artsy shop called Industry, where there was a big friendly retriever lounging, minding her own business. (She was literally “minding her own business,” in fact but we’ll get back to that.) The next thing we knew Kylie was like a badger on a leash trying to kick her golden ass! We called her off and scolded her and apologized profusely to the shopkeeper, who checked the victim of the attack out and saw that there wasn’t a scratch on her.

Then they explained to us that “Industry” was the Golden’s name and it was HER store – their tag line was “She’s a bitch to work for!”  Yikes! Good job, Kylie! So we made a nice sized purchase before leaving the store including the fancy ceramic treat jar that was prominently located on her cookie bar for years to come.

Later that afternoon we were walking down the sidewalk approaching our car and a guy came around the corner with a big Golden Retriever walking beside him – not on a leash. We had opened the car door for Kylie to hop in, but just about then the retriever decided to say hello to her. Instead of returning the friendly greeting she lunged at him like a snarling psycho! We yelled again and scolded her again, and apologized again. The guy said don’t worry about it and continued on his way. Then when we got in the car, he approached to inform us that his dog was actually bleeding. We got out and took a look at the dog, who upon closer inspection we realized was a little on the elderly side and had one of his front legs all bandaged up. The blood was coming from a tiny little hole Kylie, aka Jaws, had made in the very soft part of his big nose. Yikes! Good job, Kylie!

So we felt pretty bad, but we did point out to the guy once we verified his dog was not seriously injured, that if he had been on a leash the altercation would have been avoided. And that was pretty much the end of that, and it was pretty much the end of Kylie’s visit to Boston. In fact we told her she was 86′d from the whole city – that’s right she was banned from Bean Town!

Over the next few years the two girls made a few trips to Boston for hockey games and/or shopping but Miss Kylie stayed home with a sitter.

Eventually the ban was lifted and Kylie did make a triumphant return to Boston – and she managed to behave herself. She never, however, got over her issues with Golden Retrievers.

We have a very good friend in California, so good in fact we adopted his parents! They’re the best! Naturally they became Kylie’s doting grandparents, and Kylie loved her grandparents!

Our best road trips were to visit them in Anaheim, and as soon as we arrived she became a different dog. She was so sweet and docile and well behaved… it was weird. We would go gallivanting with our friends and Kylie would stay at the house with her grandparents. She would sit between them on a lay-z-boy and let them spoil her rotten. She would follow them around, go on walks around the neighborhood, being friendly to neighborhood dogs. It didn’t hurt that she got a steady supply of roast beef from her grandma!

After a couple days of that we would ask her, “who are you and what have you done with our punk ass dog?” So we would try and out her. We would get one of the toys she loved to terrorize, we always brought one or two along, and try and get her riled up. It actually only worked once. She suddenly got vicious and pounced on the toy and growled aggressively. Then she suddenly stopped and looked around, and her grandma was shocked, and just as we were about to say, “you see, she’s a mean dog,” her grandma said, “Oh Kylie, are they picking on you? You poor thing.” And Kylie didn’t miss a beat, she played along and went to her like she had been beaten so that she could be comforted with a whole slice of roast beef.

Con Artist!!

The funny thing was that this behavior would go on the whole time we were there, then as soon as the first back pack was in the hatch back, Kylie was in the car and you couldn’t convince her to get out again.

As much as she loved being there, being treated like a princess, she never totally lost that fear of abandonment that shelter dogs always have. She knew if we were loading the car it meant we were leaving and she was not going to be left behind.

Silly girl, like we would ever leave her!

Because she had been the victim of a drive by back in the day, Kylie had a pretty serious aversion to loud noises like thunder and of course fireworks. So our plans for pretty much every Fourth of July were to hang out with Kylie and turn up the tv to drown out the amateur pryrotechnics.

But a couple of years ago we went up to visit friends at the mountain home of Ferdinand (great dane) and Fiona (chihuahua) – quite a pair.

Then the human folk decided to go into the tiny mountain town for dinner and to catch the professional fireworks display. We figured the dogs wouldn’t hear a thing several miles away, but that they definitely needed to be separated. Ferdinand was a fifty pound puppy, who was a little too friendly and excited about absolutely everything, while Kylie and Fiona were both.. well, let’s face it.. just plain bitchy and often didn’t play well with others. So Fiona was in the back bedroom, Kylie was in the sunporch, and Ferdinand had run of the rest of the house.

The two girls and friends were out for several hours and returned to find three dogs of various sizes, standing there, tails wagging, waiting to greet us.. TOGETHER!!

We were all wide eyed with dropped jaws and momentarily panicked. But nobody had so much as a scratch and the house had not so much as a misplaced throw pillow. The best we could figure is either they could hear the fireworks and thought there was safety in numbers so they got together to duck & cover. Or more likely, friendly Ferdinand was lonely. We figured it wouldn’t be too difficult for him to use his big nose or giant head to open the sliding door and let Kylie in from the porch; but we have no idea who or how they managed to turn the doorknob to liberate little Fiona from the bedroom. We asked them, but they weren’t talkin’!

They were just celebrating their independence!

July 4th 07

In that same new jersey apartment where Kylie attacked the sprinklers on a nightly basis, she also gained access to her first doggie door – sort of…

Behind the apartment was an open space and a large ravine between us and a tree line. On occasion we would spot a fox or even a couple of deer – yes, in new jersey. Anyway… We had put a stool under the window looking out that direction that was the perfect height for Kylie to sit and gaze. Then at some point we started opening the window and letting Kylie hop out, sniff around, pee if need be, then hop back in. Of course then it became quite convenient, especially first thing in the morning or late at night to open the window, let Kylie out, go do what you gotta do, wait for Kylie to jump back in, and close the window. I know right, bad parenting!

Especially the time when she jumped out the window and right into the face of a great big dog on a leash who was unpleasantly surprised to see her. Or the time when I let her out mid-evening, and since it was cold, I shut the window while waiting, got distracted and about fifteen minutes later remembered, “Holy Crap, Kylie’s outside!!” I put on shoes and opened the front door prepared to go out and search, but there she was sitting right outside the door. She looked up at me like “what the heck is wrong with you?”

Fortunately Kylie was (usually) quick to forgive.