We decided we wanted to have our friend/photographer Nicole do a special photo shoot of Kylie and her best non-friend, Min, as a gift for Min’s mum & dad. It turned out to be a cold, rainy day so we made it an inside shoot so we went with a theme that worked well indoors..

Then at some point we had been focusing on Min for awhile trying to help her get over her camera shyness to get some great shots like this..

Well apparently Kylie had gotten bored waiting, or wanted to get back to the center of attention, because out of nowhere she kind of stumbled into the frame with her hood over her eyes! We were laughing so hard we didn’t get any photos of her walking around with her nose up and her eyes covered, but then she plopped down right in the middle and Nicole got a couple like this..

She had been wearing her hoodie for some earlier shots, but we have no idea how she got the hood on. It was so obviously intentional, and so hilarious!

She was such a clown and just loved to make us laugh!

[You can see many, many more pics from Kylie & Min's photo shoot on nicolehowardphotography.com]

We received a wonderful comment from a reader named Sara recently:

This is a beautiful tribute to your beloved friend. Thank you for sharing this with me, (everyone). I know myself how hard it is to go on without our best friends. I have heard they will be with us in the after life also, but I know the one question I want to ask God is why are their lives so much shorter than ours? I mean it is inevitable we will be hurt one day. I know that reality doesn’t keep me from loving these wonderful companions at all! I would not trade anything for the time I had with Angel my best friend, she was my service dog, well after I trained her and helped her, she was a rescue, but really she rescued me!!

God Bless you both. Keep sharing.
……………….

Thank you, Sara, for the  kind words and encouragement.

Kylie, We haven’t been sharing much lately, but its not because we haven’t been thinking about you. We think about you all the time, we miss you every day, every minute. And now we’ve got you with us all the time.

You were already tattooed forever on our hearts, now you are with us forever on the outside too.

Yes, that is your actual paw print, including the toenails that clearly needed to be clipped (people are giving us a hard time about that). Remember all those times we made you stick your paw on the ink pad then stamp all those christmas cards? You were pretty annoyed with us, but tolerant as always. We also had the artist mix some of the ashes we have with the ink so you are now literally a part of us. Obviously, they’re not healed yet, but neither are we.

Not that we needed a tattoo to keep you with us always, we just wanted something to show the world how much you mean to us inside and out.

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Before we had our CRV we borrowed one from some friends to drive up into the mountains. Kylie rode in the backseat of course, and she made herself at home on a child’s car seat. She loved it!! She loved the elevation, inside and out of the car, and especially in the car seat where she could get even higher and look down into the other cars – or at least be eye level with them. In Colorado almost everybody drives an suv and apparently she didn’t like the view from the little honda hatchback so much.

It was then that we decided to buy a CRV for ourselves – well, more accurately for Kylie! But we told her that we absolutely refused to put a child safety seat in the back!  Fortunately we found something better.. a booster seat! It was made specifically for dogs, it provided a comfortable raised seat, storage space under the seat, and you could even take it out of the car and unfold it to make a bed in the hotel room or wherever. It’s pretty cool – and it was possibly Kylie’s favorite place to be!

Her favorite place to snooze during a long road trip..

Her favorite place to stand guard, or rather sit and guard her CRV…

Definitely the best place to look down at people in tiny little cars..

and no question, the best place ever to just cruise and be cool!

But Kylie is always cool!

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Once in New Jersey we decided to go on a trek to Amish Country because, well, why not. It’s not a long drive -unless you make a wrong turn and end up in Delaware (oops!), good thing we were pretty much always in it for the journey, not the destination!

So when we finally got there, we were tooling around seeing what there is to see, but Kylie was really not happy with what there was to see. There were two things that got Kylie really riled up when she was riding in the car, one was pedestrians. You see Kylie loved going places in the car, it didn’t matter where she just liked to go! So she couldn’t understand why everybody else didn’t ride around in the car too, it seemed suspicious to her that anybody would choose to be on foot, or riding in a horse drawn buggy for that matter. Which brings us to the other thing… horses (and cows too). And what do they have more than anything of in Amish Country? Pedestrians & horses!

She was barking her head off the whole time!

Then we had stopped to do some shopping, and touristy type touring and we were at a stand where they were selling homemade candies and goodies and root beer of all things. And there was a cute little Amish girl working there, maybe ten years old, and of course she was instantly captivated by Kylie. So she came out and knelt down to say hello and Kylie who was hot & tired and already on high alert because of all the horses and such started barking like crazy at the little girl in black & white and scared her silly! Poor little girl didn’t know what hit her, we felt terrible so we bought a big jug of root beer and didn’t let Kylie have any even though root beer is her favorite.

That was, needless to say, our only trip to Amish Country!

Whenever Kylie was just lying around the house, meaning not laying on her couch or one of her many beds, or curled up somewhere comatose; you know just hangin’ out, nothin’ much going on… She would almost always have one leg out behind her.

We called it her kickstand..

We think she did it so she could be comfortable but all she had to do is stand up and she was already taking a step forward.

You know Kylie, always ready for action!

A Kyliedog in her natural habitat.

We drove around in “The Hills” for hours to get the perfect shot of Kylie under the big sign!

Helping with the laundry is exhausting.

As a follow up to The Cookie Bar story, here’s a video of Kylie complaining about the lack of service she was getting..

She was one crazy customer (and noisy)!