goat

Kylie had lots of fun on the farm, but this guy was her favorite. We weren’t sure if she wanted to be friends or butt heads with him, but she certainly wasn’t afraid of him. She even tried to heard him through the fence.

April 24th was the day that we celbrated Kylie’s Birthday [ Her actual date of birth was likely earlier in the year, if we believe what they estimated correctly when we got her from the Hawaiian Humane Society. ] And celebrate we did!

We tried to make every birthday special. If the weather was nice there was usually a picnic in the park, and a shopping trip. Sometimes we celebrated with friends, always with our little family. Sometimes we even went on a little trip to the mountains or something. But there were two things that we ALWAYS did.. we always had a Happy Meal (or some other fast food kid’s meal for lunch), and we always had CAKE!

We would sing the birthday song – which was her favorite song and she would jump and dance!

Of course there were also presents, and Kylie thoroughly enjoyed opening presents!

Today Kylie would be 16, and since last year we were dreaming of her Super Sweet 16 party that would be worthy of Mtv; with pink & silver streamers and a Barbie car since she would be old enough to drive (legally this time)!

Today we are very sad.

Happy Birthday Kylie, we miss you so much.

Only the effects of thanksgiving dinner could get Kylie to cozy up to any dog like this, let alone Ferdinand, our friends’ Great Dane..

wferdinand

His head is almost as big as she is!

When we lived in jersey, both girls had 8-5 jobs away from the house and away from Kylie (neither of us could have imagined that in recent years – we’ve been working almost entirely at home since 01). But Kylie was very much in need of supervision + we missed her a lot, so we set up the Kylie Cam, a live, streaming web cam that we could monitor online from our desks.

Mostly she just slept on the couch, until friends at work learned about the camera and learned that if they called the apartment the phone ringing would wake Kylie up. So the poor thing was constantly having her naps interrupted.

We were also able to take still pictures with the web cam and it gave us some of the funniest pictures ever!

click the images for slightly larger versions.

No, Kylie did not enjoy taking a bath..

smileybath

..we have no explanation for this picture!

Or these (click for larger)..

 bath2    bath3   

..but they made her a great model for Wag ‘n’ Wash!

I’m not sure if this is “normal behavior” but we liked to incorporate Kylie’s name into songs and she loved it! Some favorites on the playlist:

“Oh Kylie” – (sung to Steve Perry’s Oh Sherrie) Oh Kylie, our love holds on, holds on.

“Kylie Dancing” – (sung to Gwen Stefani’s Hella Good) You got me feeling hella good so I’m just Kylie dancing.

“Kylie” – (instead of Call Me by Blondie) Kylie, my love you can Kylie any any time, Ky-lie.

And maybe the best one.. “Kylie” – (instead of Mickey by Toni Basal) Oh Kylie you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind hey Kylie, hey Kylie!

Kylie’s very favorite song also had her name in it.. Happy Birthday! We used to celebrate at least birthday week around here, sometimes it was even birthday month. And since Kylie didn’t have many doggie friends she didn’t have to share much of her doggie birthday cake. So as long as her cake lasted, we would sing to her at least once a day when the cake was served. So as soon as you started with the “Haaappyyy,” she would start dancing! Kylie dancing!

And here is Kylie’s favorite cake..

bdaycake

From local dog  bakery, Remington & Friends, it’s some kind of sugar free cake with low fat cream cheese frosting with chunks of chicken on top! According to Kylie, it was awesome!

PS: My favorite song to sing to Kylie did not have her name in it.. You Are the Sunshine of my Life by Stevie Wonder:

You must have known that I was lonely,
Because you came to my rescue,
And I know that this must be heaven,
How could so much love be inside of you?

You are the sunshine of my life,
That’s why I’ll always stay around,
You are the apple of my eye,
Forever you’ll stay in my heart

needle

We were in Seattle, obviously, and we spent a lot of time trying to get the perfect picture of Kylie with the Space Needle. (It didn’t take nearly as long as getting her pic w/the Hollywood sign, but that’s another story).

What’s funny about this photo is that somebody else saw it and asked us if we were trying to get her to look like the Space Needle… We hadn’t even noticed.

When we adopted Kylie, and she rescued us, we agreed that we were going to raise her the way we wanted to be raised – with NO rules whatsoever (except the potty training of course)! Kylie was allowed to do whatever she wanted, and to BE whatever she wanted. And we are now pretty convinced that’s why she had such a vivid imagination and such a huge personality.

Then several months after she came to live with us, we went on a trip to visit friends on the westsitting coast and Kylie stayed with some of her favorite people at the time, our friends Derrick & Tammy. They adored Kylie, and every time we called to check on her they would tell us about some silly thing she had done or that she liked to eat bamboo shoots, and “what kind of dog eats bamboo shoots?!” Then during one of the phone calls the question was, “Did you know she didn’t know how to sit?” And we were confused about the past tense-ness of the question.. “Yes, of course we knew that. Did you teach her to sit?!”

“Yes, she learned really fast and she likes learning stuff!”

“Aarrgh! you broke our dog.”

Ok, that’s not exactly what we said, but that’s what we thought. We didn’t want her to learn normal dog stuff, we wanted her to be a free spirit. (aka, we were bad parents)

As it turned out it was pretty handy that Kylie knew how to sit, but we never did teach her to roll over or speak or any of that other “normal dog stuff,” oh except for high-five which came accidentally many years later while watching the super bowl. But we didn’t really need to, Kylie was just a really good dog AND a free spirit!

Kyliedog.com has been around since 1996 – way before myspace or facebook or dogster, or any of that stuff. And Kylie’s diary was launched in 2002 before anybody knew what a “blog” was.

All that internet exposure amassed Kylie her own little fan base of some really wonderful people. People who never met her but loved her from afar and regularly followed her antics. We have received several messages from them recently but perhaps none so touching as the one we received today:

My husband sent me a Kylie card so many years ago I can’t remember when she wasn’t a part of our lives! loveuHe has kept me updated as this site has grown from Kylie’s offering of fortunes to seeing her photos sleeping in the sun to watching her travels!
We love looking at every photo of Kylie and reading every story! We are heartbroken that she is gone, especially because she died on my birthday! But we know she lives on in heaven with all the other pets who live in our hearts on earth. We lost our 1st Jack Russell, Libby just before she turned 20 and I am certain she and Kylie are rolling in their own special dirt baths in the sky as I type!
Two other Russells live with us now: Sully & Katie. We know the special love these crazy pups bring to those of us special enough to live with them. Sully and Katie came to us from Jack Russell Rescue as will all the Russells who will live with us throughout our lives.
Thank you so much for loving this lucky little dog so obviously and so deeply! Thank you for sharing her life with us and all the other who are now fans of hers and you forever. When we lost Libby our hearts were crippled with grief. At some point, thankfully, we began to notice that we could think of her without tears and soon enough, we were able to think of her as we do now: with great laughter, fond stories and the great love that continues to grow even today! We hope you are soon able to remember her with fewer tears. What an amazing life you shared with her…we know you were as lucky, if not luckier, than she! We truly wish you the best!
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Kylie cards, like the one above, are one of the most popular features on kyliedog.com and just one more way we were able to share Kylie with the world. And in this case, a simple Kylie card allowed Kylie to bring joy to two people’s lives for years.

It was wonderful to receive this email today and to be reminded that Kylie really was special – not just to us, not just because she was ours.. just because she was Kylie.