Whoever spotted it would say “Kylie’s got her top down!” or sometimes, “Kylie’s got her lid off!”

We never knew how she did it, never caught her in the act. Which I’m sure is no accident because as you can see, she would get pretty annoyed when we took her picture like that – Like we were catching her without her makeup on or something!

She would walk right up to the vacuum to confront it head on, making some crazy noises. She’d be barking, howling, almost shrieking – I think at least partly because she was trying to be louder than it. But when that failed to stop it or even shut it up she pulled out all the stops.. she would actually try to bite it!

She would put her mouth on it growling viciously, then trying a new spot to chomp on, looking for a more vulnerable spot.

We have thought many times we wish we had a video of these shenanigans, but I think it never occured to us because the sound would be a little overwhelming. But I just came across these photos and had to share.

Anyway, she would pretty quickly get over it, declare a victory and go on about her business – as you may have gathered, Kylie always had a pretty full agenda. But it never failed to make us laugh!

Kylie never failed to make us happy, its hard to conceive of beginning another year without her.

Once upon a time one girl bought a new set of sheets that she selected strictly for the lovely color, giving little thought to the thread count which was around 200. She came home and put the sheets on the bed where Kylie at the time normally slept with her. That night Kylie got up on the bed and laid down, but something wasn’t quite right. She tried turning around in circles before laying down again, as a dog will do when they can’t quite get comfy. When that was unsuccessful, she tried digging and digging into the sheets like she was trying to uncover the real bedding where she was accustomed to sleeping, but that didn’t work either.

So finally with a “Fffthph” she got off the bed and laid on the floor!

The new sheets were promptly returned and replaced with something in the neighborhood of 400 thread count!

One of the first things we did when we moved in, like literally day one, was to go and get a doggie door that fit properly to give her immediate access to her yard 24/7. So its not like she was trapped indoors, so I’m not sure why she was so unhappy that we left, but she proceeded to spend the evening letting one of us know exactly what she thought…

Somehow Kylie managed to fill one girl’s bed with sand!!

What was impressive about it was that the bed was in the back of the house, as far away from the doggie door as it possibly could have been, and there wasn’t a trail of sand leading to it, there was just a bucket-full in the bed itself! Much time was devoted to speculating as to how she did it, and many theories were concocted.. Did she dig it up, clench up her little paws while she walked down the hall to hold it between her paws, waiting to release it until she got up the ramp and onto the bed?  Did she roll around outside then come back in, down the hall, up the ramp, and aggressively shake as a dog will do? We asked her… but she wasn’t talkin’! She just looked around for somebody else to blame, which lead to another theory… did she hire some raccoons?

To make matters worse, or better if you’re on Kylie’s side.. it rained most of the time we were gone. So it wasn’t just sand, it was wet-dog-scented sand!

You know how you can hold a small dog with their back against you like a baby, or cradled in your arm like a baby? Well, we could do that with Kylie and then hold things out to her and she would hold them in her hands. The best example was a q-tip, and I have no idea how we figured this out or why we did it the first time but it was amazing! She would hold one end of the q-tip between her paw/hands and bring the other end to her mouth and chomp on it then take it back out of her mouth and look at it.

You could even throw her ball to her like that and she would catch it – not in her mouth, with her hands! Then she would bring it to her mouth IN her hands! Just crazy, and so funny!

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!

The worst ever for Kylie.. the lobster. Have you ever seen a dog looking really pi$&ed off?!

..she was not amused.

The best ever, for everyone.. The Queen of Cool!

She left this get-up on for two parties without protest, it was weird. We decided that she must have decided this what what she was always meant to wear.. after all, she really is The Queen of Cool!

And don’t worry, Kylie may have thought we were playing tricks on her, but there were always treats too!

We took her to a nice farmer’s market in the garden state and we got some big pumpkins for carving and let Kylie pick out a little one for herself.  Then we gave it to her to do whatever she wanted. She would push it around, gnaw on the stem,  then bite it! She would spend a few minutes or a few hours over a few days or weeks chewing chunks out of the pumpkin and spitting them out. It made a big mess but it was fun for her, and she never ate it so obviously she was carving it!

So from the age of two she got her own little pumpkin to carve every year about this time.

It was a very important part of Halloween until just a few years ago when she apparently just outgrew the whole thing and showed no interest in her pumpkin. You know how teenagers are! But we kind of missed having her make a big orange mess all over the house.. now we really miss it.

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!

But for Kylie’s second christmas photo we bought her a Santa suit – her first christmas she was a Tropical Raindog (it was hawaii.. get it?).

It was a really high quality Santa suit, thick red plush with fuzzy white collar and a broad black belt. She looked quite jolly wearing it! And apparently it made her jolly because when we would take it off she would pick it up, drag it to the middle of the floor and roll around on it until you would put it back on her. She wore a Santa suit for six months! And it was hawaii.. it was hot!

So we started buying her toddler tees and tank tops because like I said, dog clothes were hard to come by, especially in hawaii. She really liked it wearing clothes – we liked it too, we just thought it was weird!

Then when we moved to the mainland and she got her first exposure to canine couture she built up quite the wardrobe.

Funny thing was, after living there for awhile, like a “real dog” chasing squirrels, seeing other dogs out and about, it’s like she realized that she was in fact a dog and dogs did not wear clothes. So she began the occasional protest when we would put cute stuff on her. You could get her to cooperate while you dressed her, but then she would just stand perfectly still.

When she wanted to play in the snow, she was much more tolerant – it was like she understood that it would keep her warm for awhile.

In fact, she liked the snow so much, she would even put up with this…

It was worth it for her.. Kylie loved the snow! And of course we loved putting her in cute stuff, and she looked so adorable in them, so we continued to buy her the latest fashions.

Kylie did like the compliments and attention she got when she was all dressed up, so she was willing to compromise. She was mature like that!