Woof! Yip!
(or everything you didn't want to know about our dog)

That's the first picture I ever took of Kaya. She wouldn't hold still long. You can see how skinny she still was when we brought her home. She was a stray when the police officer found her and turned her in to the Humane Society. She couldn't have been stray for long, because she's one of the sweetest dogs I've ever met. She was still on medication to cure a bacterial infection in her intestines. Cheese became my friend to get her to take the pills.

Kaya is a husky mix; mixed with what, no one knows. She's smaller than an average husky, weighing in at only 35 pounds when we got her. She's a much healthier 45 pounds now. She's just the right size for our little house. We knew she was the perfect match for us when we visited her at the foster home, and she could barely reach Booie's face to lick it. She got along with other dogs, as we could witness by her behavior with the two other dogs at the foster home. Her foster parents also reported that she left their cats alone. No threat of cat attacks was always a good thing by me.

I worked with Kaya right away to get her used to her crate. We played in her crate, and I fed her there. She took to it immediately and still sleeps in it every night. She goes into her crate by herself throughout the day. It's good when crate training works.

Kaya smiles a lot. She's a happy dog. The only smile we don't like is the grimace she gets before she's going to throw up. Booie told us Kaya looks like she's smiling but not a good smile when Kaya does that. This is a good smile.

She loves to be outside but only if someone is with her. She's a social dog.

I trained her how to sit, stay, wait, jump up and off. I started working on heel, but I got lazy when it got cold outside. It's been more fun to play with her in the snow than it is to work on heel. She apparently had no training before we got her, but she is smart and listens well. We also had to housebreak her, which was much easier than I thought it would be; another reason the crate is a good thing.

She is great with the kids and loves the cats so much that she drops her ball in front of them, so they will play with her. They return her generosity by taking pot shots at her when she walks by. She won't look either one of them straight in the eye. She's afraid of Biddy, the orange cat in the one picture, but they are slowly learning to be friends. It has only been four months. I thought it would take at least a year.

She always crosses her front legs when she lays down. As ladylike as that might be, she will roll over on her back with all her legs in the air for anyone that even hints they might rub her tummy.

She gladly wears anything, including the little witch hat I put on her in the pet store. She wore it through the entire store while we shopped for goodies. We spoil our dog. She even tried on a tutu, but I opted for a Halloween themed kerchief. She looks best in blue.

If it's cold, she will curl up in a ball and put her nose in her tail just like you see huskies do in movies. I find this quite adorable.

I tried to get a picture of her with her snaggletooth. Her top, right canine is only half the size it should be which causes the lower canine to catch in her top lip sometimes. Of course, she never does it when we want her to. We call her Snaggy when it happens.

Other things we call her are Miss Dog or Doggie Miss, Kaya-bo-baya (like the Name Game) and Doggie Girl. We never called her Shilo, which is the name she had from the shelter and the name we associated with the picture on the Humane Society web page. We don't think that looks like her, and Shilo always makes me think of a beagle because of the book, Shiloh.

We love our dog. I love our dog, even though I'm a cat person by nature. The whole dog thing is getting easier for me. I even had a dream that John took her back to the shelter, and it was so real that I woke up mad at him. He said that means I'm attached. I'll say!