Something had been missing in my life since my childhood dog died when TJ and I were dating. Boots was the perfect dog for a kid. Your basic mutt: half Pekingese and half terrier. My mom brought him home when I was only 5 and in Kindergarten. My sister and I loved him from the moment we set eyes on him. But when he chewed up my first Barbie I wasn't very happy with him. Through those tough teenage years it sometimes felt like he was the only one I could talk to and who truly listened. He was the most memorable one-eyed curly-tailed dog! No one I knew had a dog like him and I loved that he was so unique. He was almost 16 years old when he had a stroke and we had to say good-bye. It was one of the saddest days I had ever experienced up to that point. 
I thought by getting our own puppy I could have some of that magic back that I had lost. Little did I know that we had picked out a little terror!! Sky Madison. She was the cutest little puppy at the pet shop. I had originally picked out a little blond collie, but when I went back the next night with TJ a little girl was carrying it out. Devastated I picked this little black puppy instead. She was a mutt too. A mix of border collie and shar-pei. As it turns out the shar-pei made her cute, but it also gave her a naturally bad attitude and the border collie gave her an unlimited amount of energy. She loved swimming in water and running. Boy could she run! She also loved to chew on wood and carpet. I've never seen a dog that would eat so much wood! She ate wood trim, our wood fence and our wood window sills. She disliked anything with wheels. Including bikes, skateboards, roller blades and scooters. She was smart and stubborn. Somewhere I read that you could train your dog to ring wind chimes when they needed to use the bathroom. I thought it was a pretty cool idea. I hung a set right by our apartment door and it only took her a few days to get the hang of it. It was a nice alternative to incessant barking since we lived in an apartment building. Unfortunately she soon turned it against us. She would ring those bells with her nose for everything!! She especially liked to ring them when she was mad at us. Shoving her nose into them violently and repeatedly to express her displeasure. As we started to have kids it became clear that she was not their biggest fan. She resented the intrusion. While she never really bit any of them, she did like to give them warning nips when they were doing something she didn't like and she would herd them as if they were her flock of sheep. As they all got older she became less tolerant of them preferring to spend her time outside alone or in any room of the house that they weren't in. She did not turn out to be the loving family pet that I had envisioned when we brought her home as a puppy, but I loved her anyway.
As she approached her eleventh birthday her body started to fail her. First her eyes developed cataracts and she couldn't see after dusk. This made her vulnerable and defensive. Then she blew out one of her knees so badly that she could only walk on three legs. Even with pain medication she still couldn't stand to walk on it and it was so badly injured that surgery would not have helped. She was in so much pain that it had become apparent that it was time to say good-bye to her. We prepared the kids for what would happen, had them say their good-byes and then I took her to our vet. When I got home TJ, Nathan and Tate took her to my parents house, held a little funeral service and buried her under their apple tree. Nathan and Tate even made a little cross for her. Every once in a while Lana will tell me that "Skye went to Heaven" and I say "Yes she did. She went to Doggie Heaven." I miss her but I know saying good-bye was the best thing I could have done for her.
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