Kaya became very ill, and we were faced with the difficult decision of having to put her down. Her prognosis was such that the vet assured us there was less than a ten percent chance that even the most heroic of efforts would prolong her life. We didn’t want to put her through all the stress and pain she would have to face when it was so unlikely to be successful. Due to the severity of her prognosis, we decided that it was a greater expression of our love for her to let her go.
This was a difficult decision. I became more attached to that goofy little dog than I would have ever thought possible. I was the one who made us take an extra drive up to Superior, Wisconsin to check out the dog and the breeder before buying her when she would be available a few weeks later. As a puppy, she fit in the palm of my hand and looked sort of a like a hamster, just with bigger, then-floppy ears and a longer tail. I was skeptical of chihuahuas until I met her, then I was the one who declared we would take her.
Over the years, I think Kaya came to feel as connected to me as to Jaime, her technical owner. I think this was partially due to the fact that I had a big, soft belly for her to lay against, and partially due to the fact that I was the first person to give her a little piece of Canadian bacon. We never feed our dogs people food, but a few bites of Canadian bacon and Kaya was obeying the same training commands from me that she had learned to follow with Jaime. (Hobie is still not that interested when I make attempts to boss him around.)
Kaya loved chewing bones, playing with kittens (she was fast friends with our cat Fudge) and her squirrel squeaky toy, and long boat rides on the pontoon boat up at the cabin (if you opened the door at the cabin, Kaya would race for the boat, usually beating us there). She was scared of strangers, but loved attention from Jaime’s mom and sister.
I do not know if there are animals in heaven, but if there are and it would make any difference, I would vouch that Kaya deserves to be there. She was a faithful co-watcher of bad episodes of Smallville, a happy boat-rider, a connoisseur of kitchen floor crumbs, and while she was only five pounds, the house feels emptier without her. If she is in some sort of animal heaven tonight, my hope is that it is summer, there are cats there for her to play with, and there are vast fields for her to run across, with tall grass to brush against her fur-less pink belly. She always liked that.
I do not like the vet. Not only does she weigh me and my weight is no one’s business but my own, but she also pokes me with needles, and! AND! she commented on the lack of fur on my head. Actually she just came out and said I was bald! I am NOT bald! There is fuzz up there and mom says it is soft and like a peach but the vet said I was bald and that being bald is pretty common in chihuahuas. I think that is rude, don’t you? What if I told her that her stupid hair was in a pony tale and ponies smell? Would she like that? Nooooooo!
Hooooooeeeey! I haven’t blogged in a while because life has been really kind of crazy and insane and busy. Two weeks ago grandma and grandpa came to visit AND we got to run around in the backyard. I like the backyard because it gives me an opportunity to tell everyone to stay out of it. And they’d better, too, because otherwise I will bark at them even more and growl, too, and maybe bite, but only if I’m not too scared to get close enough to them to do it because some people are really big and mean looking and those are the people who should really run away when I bark, don’t you think?
Then last weekend we visited grandma and grandpa for five whole days which was exciting except for the billion hours we had to spend in the car. If puppies were eligible for social security (and that’s a scam, by the way), I’d be collecting it.
Anywho, we’re home now and have heard rumors that Johnny Depp is in town. I don’t really care for his acting. I don’t think he makes a believable pirate and he is certainly no Bo Duke. But I still hope he comes over for dinner because that seems like something that would make mom really happy.
I had been hoping that when we moved to Wisconsico, I would leave behind the damn pupparazzi, but they are everywhere, and today they caught Hobie and I in a, well, compromising position. This is NOT what it looks like. If the pupparazzi had stuck around a little longer, they would have seen me kicking that deadbeat Hobie to the curb where he belongs. A trained eye will also notice that we are not touching. This is actually pretty easy to see because Hobie is next to me, not humping my head, which is how he usually defines touching someone.
Well, I guess we might as well get this over with. Here are the embarrassing photos.
This weekend people came to visit us. I admit one of them faintly smelled like she might be someone I have barked at before, but I wasn’t sure, so I barked a second time. And then a third, and a fourth, and well, somewhere around 40 or 50, I got put in my crate. I didn’t have to spend the whole weekend there, though, just when these people who are not Mom and Dad or Grandma and Grandpa were around, which was far too much if you ask me, but nobody did ask me because I was in a crate and apparently it’s difficult to have a conversation with me when I’m in The Box.
Hobie had a lot of fun, but then it’s Hobie. He was just excited for more attention than normal. Hobie is like the chihuahua equivalent of the town bicycle when it comes to petting. Everybody gets a ride with Hobie. Or the opportunity to pet him, anyway. Chihuahuas do not really have the bone structure to support giving people rides.
Kaya here. And by here I mean … I don’t know what I mean. Because I don’t think we are living in Wisconsin yet. When mom told us we were moving to Wisconsin she was very clear about Wisconsin being the place I am from and since I am a Chihuahua that means Wisconsin is in Mexico, right? So why is it so cold here? I didn’t know it snowed in Mexico but it has snowed almost every day here and most days I don’t even get out from under my blankets not even to bark at the neighbors or the mailman because if you think about it a barking blanket is probably even scarier than I am.
I also don’t think this is Wisconsin because there were all sorts of promises about a big backyard with a nice fence but so far I have only been outside once since we moved here and all I saw was a deck that was not as nice as grandma and grandpa’s deck at the cabin because, hello, there was no lake or pontoon boat by it. I am pretty concerned about this. What is the point of a deck if you can’t sit on it and look at a lake and dream of going on four-hour pontoon rides?
Kaya here. I am flummoxed, and as many of you know, I flummox easily, but today I’m super flummoxed and that doesn’t happen as often as you might think it does.
Hobie and I have adjusted pretty well to our new lives from Grandma and Grandpa. I miss Dad, but he must have some visitation rights because I got to see him last night and I’ve seen him a few other times since we moved here.
Last night, I found out that Grandma is planning to keep me. I love Grandma. She lets me get fat, which is okay because she went the extra mile and hid all the mirrors so I don’t actually know how fat I am though I’m worried it’s pretty fat because I hurt my leg last week just from walking on it and whenever I walk past Hobie he makes comments like “make room for the wide load” and “check out the junk in the trunk” but then Grandma tries to give me another treat and I know that it would break her heart if I don’t eat it so I do.
But part of me also misses Dad. I got to sleep next to him last night while he played a videogame at Grandma and Grandpa’s and that was nice but I do think I would like to see him more and maybe that means I should go and live with him.
But then I heard that Mom is going to come and get me and now I fear that I am finding myself in the center of a custody battle. Should I live with Mom? or Dad? Or Grandma? I feel like I’m spinning in circles even though I’m not because I would get winded from all that exertion and probably get nauseous and throw up some of those treats grandma just gave me. But I am sorely flummoxed. Hobie says it’s like I’m in Kramer vs. Kramer, but I don’t think now is exactly the time to be making Seinfeld references. And for some reason nobody seems to be talking about where Hobie will end up. He says it’s because no one can truly own that much sexiness. It must shared. That might sound generous if I didn’t know that “Sharing the sexiness” is his code phrase for humping my dome.
So I’m worried about what is going to happen. I know I look worried all the time, but this time I really am worried.
I have a new friend named Bob. He’s kind of a funny-sounding guy. He kind of sounds like he has something in his throat all the time and he sometimes asks me questions like, “How many times must a man look up before he can see the sky?” and I said just once because the sky is always there, but then I realized that it was a trick question because sometimes a man will look up but he will be in the house and he won’t be able to see the sky unless there is a skylight and boy does that question make my head hurt! Then he asked me, “How does it feel to be on your own with no direction home like a rolling stone?” and I told him I wouldn’t mind finding out what it is like to be on my own because Hobie is ALWAYS around but I wouldn’t really like to be lost because a stranger might try to touch me and that would be really bad.
Anywho. My friend Bob said he’d help me to get Santa to get me something from my Christmas list this year. Check out the video he made for me.
It is Thanksgiving and I have a lot to be thankful for, or at least that’s what people say, although since I live with Hobie, I’m not sure that’s true. He’s kind of bossy. OK, very bossy. OK, super duper annoyingly bossy and I hate him. OK, I don’t hate him, I just don’t like him as much as I like tacos or as much as I liked Fudge. He was tubby and hit the catnip a lot, but he could jump up on the counters and paw pieces of cheese onto the floor for me and that is a really nice thing for a friend to do and Hobie NEVER does that. Even if he could jump on the counters, he would just eat all the cheese himself while making fun of me because I can’t jump that high. But he can’t either so that’s good. Although someone really should be eating that cheese.
Anywho … I decided to make a list of everything I am grateful for this year.
1.) Grandma’s fluffy red blanket. It is so cozy!
2.) Grandma being gullible enough to give us treats every time we look sad. I am thankful that she hasn’t caught on that I always look sad. Ha!
3.) Getting to see my mom this weekend and hopefully getting to move to Wisconsin, Mexico with her. I am so excited to go to the beach!
4.) Mom and dad finally getting a house with a yard so that we can bark at more things!
Oh my gosh, ya’ll! We get to move in with mom soon! Apparently some sort of dooshbag (what is a dooshbag? … it doesn’t sound tasty, but I’d be willing to give it a try) has presented mom and dad with a counter offer (they are buying counters? what is going on?) and apparently it sucks. So mom is moving into a rented place that dad says is in the middle of nowhere but has wireless Internet and DVR and a big high-def TV so Dad said mom is getting a Playstation 3 for Christmas but mom said “haha… funny story.” I didn’t think it was a very funny story. It wasn’t really a story at all. No plot.
Anywho… Dad says that we have to watch out since we are living in the country because all work and no play make mom a dull girl. He says that if we ever feel the urge to say “Red rum” we should tell him. I don’t know what red rum is, but I bet it goes good with tacos. I hope we get tacos at the new place. Grandma is nice and all but there has been a serious lack of tacos but really a lot more snacks than we are used to.
Speaking of that, don’t tell Grandma but we have trained her really good now! Every time she goes downstairs we have trained her to give us a treat. So now Hobie and I are inventing reasons for her to go downstairs. It is the perfect crime!
