Kylie didn’t just love dirt, she loved a good dirt bath! That’s what we called it when she was feeling good and would roll around on her back and twist and kick and snort. (when horses do it, you call it a dirt bath) It was hilarious! But it was nearly impossible to catch on camera because it was really spontaneous (and usually took place under poor lighting).

The short film below was made just a few months ago. It’s a really short dirt bath – sometimes it went on for several minutes – then you’ll notice she notices the camera..

So cute!

Btw, there’s a lot of videos of Kylie on You Tube. Just search on Kylie dog or on popartpet.
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This just in! We found some older photos of the dirt bath! It’s harder to fully appreciate the truly acrobatic nature of the dirt bath from still photography, but having seen the video already you get the idea.

And it’s still funny!

Since we told you how girlie Kylie was sometimes, we should give equal time to her love for all things dirty and stinky!

She was a dog after all (or was she?), so sometimes instead of rolling on perfume samples she rolled on dead frogs or other unidentifiable stinky stuff.dirt2

Once in Jersey she took a romp through the ravine beside our apartment and came out the other side covered from the shoulder down in green-ish, brown-ish, gray-ish sludge – New Jersey sludge – and happy as a clam!

In Colorado she became mountain dog. She loved going for hikes, especially with her aunt Merrianne, especially when she got to get especially dirty.

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Of course, as the mom I would always spoil the fun and give her a bath. Even this new year’s eve, we were having guests so I was busy cleaning the house, running the vacuum, when in comes Kylie through her doggie door leaving a trail of muddy paw prints behind her. I turned off the vacuum and yelled STOP, before she got from the wood floor to the carpet! She had apparently found some sort of mud pit in her backyard which thrilled her no end. So again I was the bad guy, picked her up and carried her to the tub and she got a happy new year bath.

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Crazy, Dirty, Happy, Dirt Dog!

We received a wonderful email from a friend of ours and of Kylie’s. Hope he doesn’t mind that we’re sharing it here…

I know it must still be as hard as ever. I was just at “two girls and a dog” and I was tearing up. I was chatting with a friend of mine last night who lives in Toronto (Kylie went to Toronto!?! You’ll have to tell me about it) and she has a little dog too, so I directed her over to Kylie’s page and even she was tearing up just thinking about it. She was an amazing little girl! (Kylie, not the friend I was chatting with… I don’t need Chris Hansen and Dateline knocking at my door! ….. again)

Anyway, I was reading through the blog posts and saw the story of how she would only respond to Howard for a while (didn’t you call ME Howard for a while? Since I looked like Howard Stern for a bit). I also saw where your friend thought she was Cleopatra in a former life, I remember you telling me that story. I also remember her fascination with perfume samples! I always think that particular personality was a flamboyant flapper from the 20s! Because Kylie was the Bee’s Knees and the Cat’s Pajamas all rolled in to one! There were definitely a lot of personalities in that little pooch, and you of all people knew, she had to be a “very old soul”. Hopefully, if there is Kismet, Serendipity, and Reincarnation, she will somehow find her way back to you. And if I know Kylie, even if you got another dog, she’d get in there and take it over! She was a little badass in that respect! I picture her thumping her chest sayin’, “Not in MY house!”

With Kylie and you guys, I have to think of the final line from the movie “Pretty Woman”, that after you rescued “The Princess”, she rescued you right back!

rescued

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So true. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

A friend of ours and Kylie’s once said he thought she must have been Cleopatra in a former life or something as he watched us playing her with our make up brushes. We would pretend to put blush on her cheeks and eye shadow over her great big eyes. She loved it! She loved us putting necklaces on her too.

She would even put perfume on herself. If we ever got fashion magazines, with the annoying perfume ads with the stinky sample, we could put it on the floor, she would open it and dig at it until she found the page with the perfume sample. She would then tear out that page, and tear open the flap to expose the perfume, then roll all over the page getting the smell all over herself. (you can click on the thumbnails below for larger images)

It was very funny to watch, not so pleasant to smell! She’d smell like a cheap floosie for two days!

Once the Kylie nicknames started they kind of never stopped. Shortly after the Frankenweenie, Trashhound, Ready Kilowatt days she got her showgirl name, Kylie Espadrille Cha Cha Cha!

No, we don’t know where that came from it just sort of rolled off the tongue one day and Kylie really liked it so it stuck. We don’t know where most of her nicknames came from, but some of them were obvious like K-dog or K-diddy, which sometimes was DJ K-diddy. Some were random like Monkey or Chicken, which would become compound like Monkey Doodle or Monkey Butt, or Chicken Little or Chicken Butt. “Shorty” was also a favorite, and kind of obvious, and it also sometimes became compound like Shorty Pie or Short Pants. Then “Pants” became a very popular stand alone nickname which eventually at some point became Chicken Pants! We didn’t really know why we had started calling her Chicken Pants until the two girls were on a trip back home tochicken hawaii, the only place we really ever went without her (quarantine laws). We were at the shooting range of all places, which was overrun with wild chickens of all things, but not just your everyday barnyard chickens, they were fancy chickens with feathers all the way down their legs so it looked like they were wearing pants…ergo, Chicken Pants!! We were so excited, it all made sense now because Kylie’s back legs were so puffy and extra furry! You chickenpantscan kind of tell in this picture of her hiny, even though she’s wearing her snow suit and her legs are mostly covered you can see right under her tail how thick her hair is on her hindquarters. Chicken Pants was perfect!

Her gangsta name was “Kylie Three Toes”, she got that after she lost one toe on her back left foot to cancer. But eventually we just started referring to that foot as her “Lucky Fin.”

Then there was the two week period several years ago when we realized she wouldn’t answer to Kylie anymore. So we asked her if she had changed her name. But she wouldn’t answer, so we started trying new names.. Fluffy, Fido, Sadie, we kept guessing but nothing worked so we moved on to more people names of both genders until she finally responded to one. Howard – she came when we called her Howard and not when we called her anything else.

You probably think we’re making this up, but I swear that she would totally ignore us when we called her Kylie but would snap to it when you called her Howard. Until one day she was over it and went back to being Kylie.

Kylie always had a huge imagination, so maybe she was pretending to be Howard Hughes or Howard Stern, we have no idea. But she really did like nicknames, especially when we worked them into a song or something.

God we miss Kylie Espadrille Cha Cha Cha Shorty Chicken Pants!
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We remembered another – LL Cool K!

If we remember even more, we’ll add them here as well..

We’ve been asked a number of times over the years, “where’d you get the name Kylie?” Oddly we don’t exactly remember.

We had a chalkboard in the apartment where all three roommates wrote suggestions. We remember writing Penelope, Snickerdoodle, Snoopy and the like, but we don’t know who wrote KYLIE or why. It was way after Kylie Minogue’s “Loca-Motion” had left the station, and long before her comeback came back, and I can’t really think of any other famous Kylies.

I can kind of imagine Kylie herself, maybe when we were all asleep, somehow climbing up onto the shelf under the chalkboard and putting the chalk in her mouth and spelling out K-Y-L-I-E, because obviously that was meant to be her name. We all agreed, Kylie it is.

In Australia a kylie is a curved stick or a boomerang, which is appropriate because we could let Kylie run and explore and she would always come back.

meankylie At a gift shop at the space needle where they were kind enough to let Kylie come in and do some shopping we found these little picture frames that had names along with what the name “meant,” you know the type. It reads, “KYLIE, An Australian name influenced by ‘Kyle’ and ‘Kelly.’ A very emotional and romantic person, she is full of energy and able to mesmerize those around her.”

I have to say, that’s actually pretty accurate, except for the romantic part maybe! So of course I bought the frame, but to be ironic I put this picture in it.

After Kylie became Kylie, we filled the chalkboard in that old apartment with nicknames that she earned in the early days, like Frankenweenie – which was a reference to her metal stitches on her scar from when she was spayed, Iron Belly – because she could eat anything like a whole rib bone and a roach trap, Trashhound – which is pretty obvious, and oh yeah, Ready Kilowatt – because she chewed through electrical cords, even some that were plugged in, giving her quite a jolt!

I know I said this wouldn’t be a chronological story and I’m sure for the most part it won’t be. Then again a little background wouldn’t hurt…

Once upon a time there were two girls. They were in their mid-twenties, living in Honolulu, and they had become fast friends with a common objective – ‘We must get an apartment so that we can get a DOG!’

So as soon as said apartment was rented regular trips to the Hawaiian Humane Society began. (Nevermind the fact that said apartment had a No Pets policy. That’s another story for another time) One day very shortly into this journey, one girl went to the Humane Society on her own and saw a very odd looking creature. It was about three feet off the ground having climbed the chain link fence gate of the dog run. “What’s that?” the girl inquired.

THAT was a mess of a lump of a “dog,” covered with motor oil and ticks, that had just come in that day. So the girl, who had been hoping to find something more along the lines of a pure-bred pup, asked to see IT. The dog was unresponsive and looked tired, beat up, and old, so the girl took pity. She put her name on a list because there was a waiting period in case somebody came to lay claim. Then she came home to announce to her roommates (there was also a boy in residence at the time) that she had found this poor, old dog who probably didn’t have long left to live so she was planning to bring her home to have a big party for whatever time she had left. (Which as it turns out, is exactly what we did!)

The next day both girls went to see the dog who had been moved from a run with three or four other dogs to a run with just a shepherd puppy to share. She had been cleaned up but now was sporting a gash on her head that we were told she got when she started a big melee with the other dogs in the pen. This seemed surprising at the time.

We took her out of the run to get acquainted but that was difficult because the little dog was so skittish. She mostly just sat on the grass, no eye contact. We gave her treats but she just tried to bury them or at least cover them with grass, which was cute but heartbreaking. The only true sign of life we saw was when we got her to walk near the area where they keep guinea pigs in cages. When she caught sight of them moving around, and presumably got a scent, she really perked up! But it was very short-lived and we just assumed, well she is a terrier of some sort so that’s just instinct.

When it was time for her to get sprung from the pokey, we went to pick her up and on her adoption papers we noticed it read “Age: appx 8 mos”. To which we said, “What?! Are you sure??” We were assured that the vet had determined this through thorough examination so we had no choice but to believe them. But it wasn’t until in the weeks and months to come, when she got BIGGER, that we really decided they must have been about right. By the way, on that last day she had been moved into a private run, all by herself, which was odd because they were at max capacity. They told us that she had turned out to be a bit of a scrapper. To which we said, “What?! Are you sure??” We would find out much later that they were right about this too.

She was a little scared of the car ride, then she walked in the door of the apartment, where she wasn’t allowed, stepped about one foot in the door and peed!

To the best of my knowledge this is the first picture of Kylie in her new home.

babykylie1

She spent three weeks laying on the couch like a potato, getting up periodically to pee on the carpet, then one day she decided she was staying so “they might as well get to know the real me,” and she WOKE up! Suddenly we had a puppy with all the craziness and destruction that comes with that!

To be continued…

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Kylie was 15, we had already begun plans for her Super Sweet 16 Party in April. Lots of people consider 15 old for a dog but with modern vet care and the multitude of healthy options in pet food it just isn’t, unless maybe we’re talking about super-large breeds. And Kylie was definitely not an old dog. She ran and played in her backyard everyday, rain or shine and especially in the snow. She loved going for long walks, and a good game of keep-away with pinky. No matter how many ramps we put in front of the furniture to encourage her to go easy on her joints she still prefered to jump more often than not.

This picture was taken in her beloved backyard just about a week before Kylie got sick.

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We’re not saying Kylie’s life wasn’t long, it was, and it was most certainly full, yet the end came  so suddenly and unexpectedly we still can’t make sense of it.

Kylie had a brain tumor. After a really bad nights of pacing and walking into corners we took her to her wonderful vet, but by then she seemed much improved. After another night that was even worse we took her to a neurologist. When we got there her temperature was almost 106. They had to put her in cold water to lower her temp but it wouldn’t stay down. This told the doctor that there was a tumor in the area that regulates body temperature which happens to be a location that makes it inoperable. There were options but none that were remotely worth the pain and trauma it would have caused with almost no hope of a positive prognosis. Our only choice was painfully, horribly,  undeniably, unthinkably clear.

They were thankfully able to give her an injection that would keep her temperature down for a few hours. So we took her to her regular, wonderful vet who turned over a room to us, let us put blankets on the floor and call friends to come and visit Kylie.

Thanks to the medication she was feeling better, relaxed, and hungry. She ate two jars of baby food, and a handful of cheerios, then dear friends brought her a hamburger, tater tots, and a sundae from sonic. Which she thoroughly enjoyed!

Kylie was surrounded by her friends and family when we said our tearful goodbyes in a room full of so much love…

It was the hardest thing we could ever imagined having to do, yet at the same time in the million times we’ve gone over it and over it and over it, we can’t imagine how it could have been better for Kylie. It was peaceful, she wasn’t alone, or scared, or in pain; she was surrounded by her favorite people with a full tummy. How rare is that?

About as rare as finding such an amazing little soul as Kylie, our little unicorn.

So again we wanted to get the sad stuff out of the way first, so that while we continue to grieve our loss we can look back on all the happy times, of which there were thousands, and somehow find a way to move on.

It’s kind of cliche’ to begin a story at the end but in this case it’s absolutely necessary just to get the sad part out of the way. This site is intended to chronicle the laughs, the love, the life of Kylie, and to remember how wonderful she made our lives everyday!

Last week, sadly Kylie, had to move on from her life with us to greater adventures. But we willmisskylie3 never forget how she changed our lives.

Kylie was truly exceptional, and one of a kind, totally worthy of her own website on the internet since 1996! But for those of you not familiar with kyliedog.com, here are some things you should know:

Kylie was more well-traveled than lots of people. She was born in hawaii which truly makes it paradise, we adopted her from the Humane Society there when she was eight months old. Then we moved to new jersey when she was 4 and that became her launching pad. She’s literally been from coast to coast (and Canada) including:

New York City (including Times Square, Central Park, and Rockerfeller Center at Christmas)
Boston
Philadelphia
Amish Country
New England
Washington DC
Toronto
L.A.
Hollywood
Las Vegas (one of her favorite destinations)
Seattle
Vancouver
Plus many less “exciting” destinations like Kansas, Texas, Nebraska, South Dakota, etc.

Kylie loved road trips! She visited multiple world’s wonders – Niagara Falls, Mount Rushmore, The Grand Canyon, and Old Faithful. She’s seen Hoover Dam, The Space Needle, Pike’s Peak, Royal Gorge bridge, the Statue of Liberty, the White House, even the Hockey Hall of Fame (can you believe they wouldn’t let her in)! And of course the ever-popular roadside oddities like Carhenge, that big thermometer in Baker, CA, and the entire town of Roswell, NM.

misskylie2We moved to colorado about seven years ago and Kylie loved it here too. The weather is nice in Denver almost all the time so she got to go on many hikes, and loves climbing up rocks and walking through streams, and chasing bunnies, and she really loves the snow, going sledding, and going to the mountains!

Kylie is quite famous! She was on the radio when we had a friend in honolulu that was a dj who let her hang out in the booth with him. Then she moved on to television when her Psychic Puppy Network got media attention. It was featured on the So Graham Norton show in the UK, then she was interviewed for a television show called “The Internet Tonight” on the former TechTV channel (now G4). PPN (the psychic puppy network) was also featured in a newspaper in florida, on USA today’s website, on Seventeen magazine’s website, and for awhile it was a link on Penn & Teller’s website.

Kylie was even a model! Wag n Wash used her as a spokesmodel on their website and in their brochure and print ads. She was very photogenic even though she really didn’t like the camera. Kylie is possibly one of the most photographed dog in the world, just visit her flickr page (or click all the blue links in this post) and you’ll see what I mean.

Kylie was such a comedian, she made us laugh almost every day. She was our child, our best friend, and she was a Rock Star! She was loved by everyone who knew her, and thanks to her website even by some who never met her. We were so privileged that she shared her life with us.

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Of course kyliedog.com and our memories of this sweet funny girl will live on. It was all a work of love, for the most special soul we have ever known, but we still find ourselves driven to share the wonderment of Kylie with the rest of the world – she really was just too special for just two girls to maintain – so here we will share her with you. Not in chronological or any other kind of order necessarily, just as it comes. We hope it will bring you a small fraction of the happiness she brought to us.