…just more bad parenting!

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.

Here’s a friday night movie for all you Kylie fans! It’s an action Flick..

Kylie used to do this every night in the summer in our New Jersey apartment. And the sprinklers didn’t come on until 11 PM!

We learned what we were dealing with very early on in our relationship with Kylie. She had come to live with us in September and at the time, one of the girls was working on art installations at a club in waikiki along with a very cute boy named Gary. So we two girls were constantly going on and on in front of Kylie about Gary this and Gary that, and basically swooning as girls will do in their 20’s.. Gary, Gary, Gary.

One evening that October, we were taking dinner to a couple coworkers at the club including the cute boy, Gary.  Kylie was with us because even though she had only been living with us for a matter of weeks she had already become our constant little sidekick – besides she needed more driving lessons! We got out of the car and the guys walked out to meet us and as soon as Gary came out and we said “Hi Gary,” Kylie took off running toward Gary. Up to this point, we had observed that Kylie was a little scared or intimidated around men, especially tall men and Gary was over 6 feet tall; but she ran straight up to him dropped on the ground and rolled over on her back wagging her tail.

Naturally Gary bent down and rubbed her belly and told her how cute and sweet she was. While he was doing that Kylie, and we are not making this up, looked over at us with an unmistakable expression on her little face.. “Ha ha! The cute boy likes me and is petting me – not you!” Our jaws dropped and we looked at each other like what have we gotten ourselves into!? After their little interlude Kylie was just so pleased with herself, and we were aware for the first time of how in-tune she was with us. And we were aware of what a piece of work she was!

..Kylie’s so pretty she could make a burlap sack look good!

We’ve begun hearing the first claps of springtime thunder around here and it makes us miss Kylie even more – if that’s possible. She had always been especially scared of loud noises, which is why we called her Chicken Little. Of course then when we found out about the drive-by we felt terrible and once again realized we had been really bad parents!

Anyway, once we moved to the mainland and had thunderstorms to deal with regularly, they didn’t just frighten Kylie, they would send her under the bed for the rest of the day, shaking and cowering. It was heartbreaking and absolutely nothing would console her, until…

One day, I don’t know how we got the idea, but during a particularly thunderous thunder storm we started encouraging her to BARK back at the thunder. And she did! Meekly at first, but with encouragement she got braver and of course louder! And louder, and louder, and louder, barking, howling, and carrying on like a lunatic!! All the while we would cheer her on and she loved it, and we loved seeing her brave and empowered instead of terrified. Knowing that thunderstorms are a common fear for dogs, we thought we should do an infomercial or something about how to empower your pooch, and get rich.

Then we went on vacation to hawaii – the only place we went on vacation without Kylie – and a friend of ours stayed at our house to take care of Kylie. One day when we called to see how they were doing, the friend who sounded very tired told us they were fine but there had been a series of storms the night before, in the middle of the night, and well therefore she was pretty tired at work that day.

“Oops, sorry about that,” we apologized. We felt a little guilty, but we explained our motivation for encouraging the foul-weather ferociousness. Fortunately there weren’t any more stormy nights during our trip and we brought our friend a large quantity of macadamia nuts and all was forgiven!

We of course continued to instigate the insanity, especially in colorado where thunder comes almost daily from late May to early July.

Right on top of Kylie’s head, near the middle of that white stripe, there was a bump on her little skull. You couldn’t see it but you could feel it, it had always been there, a little left of center (which seemed appropriate).

Our first thought.. devil horns!

But there was only one and it wasn’t really in the right place.

Then we realized she must have been a Unicorn!!

It was a little off-center because you know the unicorn’s horn is a spiral.

It made perfect sense and explained why Kylie was so very UNIque!

And the winner is…

Kylie!!

That hand-puppet was the best purchase from a dollar store ever!

Well since somebody noticed something missing in the previous snapshot we had better go ahead and explain how Kylie got her gangster name, “Kylie Three Toes,” in addition to all her other nick names.

Several years ago we spotted a fairly innocent looking bump on the inside of Kylie’s back left foot. Dr. Monica took a look and couldn’t really tell what was going on so we decided we better remove it and have a biopsy done. We got the news in just a few days that it was in fact a nerve sheath tumor, so Kylie had to have a second surgery this time to remove the entire toe.

Fortunately, with the amputation we got good margins and fortunately Kylie hardly noticed the absence. At first we called it her “magic monkey paw,” but Monica did not appreciate that so we settled on her “lucky fin.” But after awhile we didn’t notice the absence either, it was just part of who she was.

One of our favorite photos of Kylie, ever – and that’s saying a lot! This was taken up in the mountains. Kylie loved exploring the great outdoors, especially climbing around on rocks. It took a little convincing when we first moved to colorado to get her to get her feet wet, but once she did she became some sort of river dog, more than happy to wade in and get those paws nice and muddy!