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Today on the news and on the internets was the story of Eclipse, the “urbanized” lab who lives in Seattle and gets on the bus all by herself and gets off at the stop for the dog park!

It definitely seemed like something Kylie would have done. In her first home with us in the high-rise in Honolulu, Kylie would lay on the floor for hours looking out the windows that went all the way to the floor, watching the bus stop across the street. We always thought it was probably like watching tv for her, and she would keep track of who got on and off every day and at what time. Now however it seems plausible that she was plotting.. “I’ll bet that bus would take me to the park (or beach or where ever Kylie wanted to go on a particular day), if I could just get down to that bus stop!”

Then when reading some of the comments on the article about Eclipse, many of which were criticizing her parent for being so irresponsible, which we can definitely relate to (obviously since there is an entire category on this blog dedicated to our “bad parenting”), this one was especially relatable:

My dog would do this if she could. She’s a Shiba and thus incredibly independent. Every time I leave her in the car to run into a store, I come back to find her in the driver’s seat. One day she’ll just speed off as soon as she sees me coming out of the supermarket, because she can be a jerk like that.

We not only would often find Kylie in the driver’s seat when she was left alone in the car, we sometimes had to return to driving1the car quickly because she was impatiently honking the horn! Seriously! There were witnesses, and they would ask.. How did you teach her to do that? To which we would answer, “Why would we teach her to do that?” We didn’t.. She did!

Kylie was very urbanized!

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It’s not a christmas song, but feels appropriate..

I got a pocket, got a pocket full of sunshine  526796696_893201dab6_z

I’ve got a love and I know that it’s all mine

Take me away
A secret place
A sweet escape
Take me away
Take me away
To better days
Take me away
A hiding place

 

There’s a place that I go that nobody knows
Where the rivers flow and I call it home

We’re missing our sunshine on christmas and everyday.

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Once we moved from Hawaii to the east coast, we were completely intrigued by the lottery, including Kylie! (Hawaii, lucky1is still one of the few states with no form of lottery or legalized gambling.) I don’t mean intrigued like we needed to
be featured on an episode of “Intervention”, we didn’t even play habitually, but occasionally we did enjoy picking up a few scratchers at the local Wawa store or 7-11

And the ritual was to always first rub the scratcher cards on Kylie’s butt for good luck!

Oddly, her butt was quite lucky.. She almost always at least broke even, often won at least a few bucks, sometimes even $8 or $10, and rarely ever got nothing. And yes of course, the money she won she got to keep and and to her allowance, stashed in her piggy bank. And naturally when she didn’t win, the money for the tickets came out of our pockets, not her allowance, because obviously we picked the wrong ticket!

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Unfortunately, the luck seemed to be limited to the little scratchers, and believe me we tried with Powerball tickets too. And while we obviously never got rich, we didn’t care… we had already hit the jackpot – we had Kylie!

 

 

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We’re in the middle of the hottest time of year here in Colorado, several days in a row approaching triple digits – this was NOT Kylie’s favorite! Since leaving her tropical home in Hawaii behind, and since the first time she experienced winter, Kylie became a snow dog! And the heat meant several days in a row where she couldn’t go anywhere. (at least not until we went to the drive inn on friday night!)

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In the winter, we would put layers of clothes on her and we even put a heating pad in her booster seat in the car so she could go everywhere with us. She had very fashionable parkas and even a snow suit for our sledding trips. But in the summer, we could strip her down to naked and spray her with water, which she did not appreciate by the way, but since she was always wearing that pretty fur coat there was only so much you could do to keep Kylie cool.

Buvows1t on a few occasions we made an exception and ventured out in the heat with Kylie, water bottles in tow. One such occasion was a dog event in July, specifically a mass “Dog Wedding”. That just seemed like too much ridiculousness to pass up, and hey, if all the other dogs could handle the heat so could Kylie.  Of course there were concerns when taking Kylie to ‘dog events’ not matter what the season; remember Kylie was not a fan of other dogs! So we went to the wedding prepared to take the usual precautions. But what we learned there is that the heat was sort of like Kylie’s Kryptonite. She was far too busy seeking shady spots or a place to lie down, to bother with confrontations. The further her tongue fell out of her face, the less concerned she became with having her butt sniffed or any other doggie body buffer zone violations!

While this realization did not mean the three of us started spending lots of time out of doors in the Summer (us girls kind of hate the heat too), it did make us more likely to consider it. So at least Kylie could get out and have some fun until temperatures came back down, and it was time for snowfall and sledding again!

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Going to visit Kylie’s home.. Hawaii. We have so few pictures of her there, but so many memories!

Her getting in a bag to sneak out of our apartment because there were No Dogs Allowed, we called in getting “In Burrito” (instead of incognito) and Kylie thought it was the best!

Her first trip to the beach which was lots of fun – then the next day she could hardly move because her little legs were stiff from running around in the sand.

The party at our apartment when we thought she must have snuck out but she was stuck under the bed somehow.

The time she ate half a chocolate cake out of the trash (and rolled on the rest of it on the carpet)! Oh, and trying to take off with a whole piece of chocolate cheesecake in her mouth!

 

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Dressing her in a Santa suit for her christmas card photo and having her not want to take it off … ever!

 

..so fun, so funny, so amazing, so missed; so happy to go where you came from even though it makes me miss you more – if that’s possible.

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Ever seen a dog with better table manners? (or a kid for that matter!?)562065055_0ddd2d740e_z

Kylie knew good manners meant tasty rewards!

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It’s been another year without Kylie, which makes it 5, which seems unthinkable. We recently found the blog entry below and it so accurately explains the transformation that takes place in the years that follow a loss.

It was written by a woman who lost her spouse, but we believe it doesn’t matter what the relationship is, the loss of true love leaves you forever altered, forever broken. You move on, because… you’re human. You form new attachments, you love new friends, even a new dog. You also loose some old friend because you’re not the same person you used to be. Sometimes you still miss them, but mostly you miss your old self. You are able eventually to enjoy things, appreciate things, but never in the same way; good things and bad things too are still somehow diluted. You haven’t healed, but you’ve scarred.

Anyway, the writer of the article says it much better and sometimes its amazingly helpful to find something that accurately articulates what you’re feeling when you can’t:

When Grief Doesn’t End

The fourth anniversary of my husband’s death is coming up in March this year. It seems like such a long time when it’s written down like that, but really they’re the fastest years I’ve ever lived through. I can just barely remember a few things from the first year after he died, like when I watched the entirety of the Sopranos in three days with the curtains shut, smoking in the dark. Otherwise there’s just blankness, like someone else took my body to work and to the grocery store and all those things that bodies do while my mind slept.

And now I find that I’ve been dating someone for two years and that I love him. This isn’t a huge shock to me; it’s been coming for awhile. But it’s hard to reconcile that with the fact that I’m still grieving and that I still miss my husband, that sometimes I can miss him so much I feel like my heart will fall straight out of my body, but that I can love this new person too. It’s like a betrayal to both of them, never being fully present for either.

And often I realise that I’m grieving more for myself, for my old life and my old brain. I still feel broken in ways I never expected. I thought that I would become a stronger person, more independent (we married so young that I had never lived on my own) and with a deeper sense of identity. I thought that my loss would teach me to appreciate everything more deeply. I thought there might be a silver fucking lining somewhere, some deep life lesson that would make me a better person like in the movies – but instead I’m less than I was, more anxious and fearful and lonely. I grasp too hard at the things I’m afraid of losing now that I see they can be truly lost. I’ve seen that I’m not infallible and that all those things that I believed happened only to other people – sometimes they happen to you too.

I never imagined that grief could last this long. I thought I would be my old self by now, that I’d snap out of it and return to the land of the living. But it’s impossible to ever return in that way. Things are getting better, I am healing and I can become stronger, but I can never be the person that I was. Early on, when I read on forums that some people felt their third, or fourth, or fifth year was the hardest I refused to believe it because I couldn’t imagine it getting any harder than it was in those dark early days. And I can see now that part of what’s harder is that, over time, more and more of the people around you expect you to be fine again. And when they see that you’re no longer weeping on the bus or during lunch or at any other inconvenient time or location that presents itself to you, they think that means you’re back to normal. But grieving isn’t just being sad, it’s also about that process of becoming a new you, of finding your place in the world without the person who is no longer with you. It doesn’t end when you turn back into your old self, it’s a continuous metamorphosis. And while transformation carries with it tremendous possibility, it is often also horribly scary and painful.

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Recently we found somebody online explaining their dog’s brilliantly lazy naptime routine, he would take a mouthful of food from his bowl and drop it on the floor then lay down with his mouth near the food and nod off. So that way if he wakes up hungry, he doesn’t even have to get up – gotta admire that kind of ingenuity!

And it reminded us of Kylie’s dinnertime routine. Because absolutely everything was an opportunity for fun & games, Kylie would take a mouthful of food and make a spinning jump letting the food fly out of her mouth as she turned. So kibble went flying in multiple directions – we would hear it from the other room, rolling across the floor, hitting the baseboard or the cabinets, and sometimes a metal ‘clink’ sound when it would hit the stove. Then came the best part for Kylie.. she would hunt and stalk the food and be very pleased with herself when each morsel was captured! Sometimes she would even pick up one of the individual pieces once it was found and give it another toss across the room just so she could hunt it down again!

Come to think of it, she had a very similar technique whenever we were eating mexican food and gave her pieces of flour tortilla. No idea why.. but it became her prey and her the hunter! Sometimes it seemed like she was the comedian and we were her adoring audience, but I can assure you that Kylie was far more interested in entertaining herself than us – most of the time anyway. We were just lucky enough to be able to witness her and her zest for life!

Is it any wonder we love her so much?!

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Missing Kylie on christmas..

..and always.

 

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Can’t believe we’ve never posted about “The Fox” before, Kylie’s arch enemy for many years.. When we lived in a townhome in the suburbs of Denver in a neighborhood called Fox Pointe, there was a sign as you entered with a very menacing (at least to Kylie) picture of a fox.

And absolutely every time we drove past it, coming or going, day or night, Kylie had to put him in his place! And just so you know, Kylie was no fool; we had let her out of the car to walk up to the sign on more than one occasion, she was quite aware that it was not a real fox (although we did occasionally see a real fox in that neighborhood). This was just another one of Kylie’s creative little games she made up to entertain herself, and we belive also to entertain us. And typically the whole family would get in on it… As we would approach the sign and Kylie would stand up in her booster seat in preparation we were more than happy to get her all riled up!

“Get that damn fox Kylie!” She would bark like crazy, viciously! Sometimes we even joined in with the barking.

Oh and when the holidays were approaching and somebody from the HOA would put a santa hat on the fox, look out because that pissed her off even more! Not sure why, you’d think she would appreciate the fact that he looked ridiculous and certainly less threatening. But apparently foxes, real or otherwise, should not wear santa hats!!

{sigh} It’s just another, GREAT, example of how Kylie made everything more FUN!