My old dog, Chiquita, was put to sleep a couple years ago, at the reasonably old age of fourteen. I wanted to put a little memorial here for her. Here is her story... but be warned, it's not a great one.

We got Chiquita back in 1999. She was our first dog, and I loved her. But she was not a "good" dog. She was a nervous, flighty, bitey little thing. My mother picked the scared puppy and not the friendly one. She also obtained her from a less-than-awesome breeder, who advertised her as a purebred and charged a lot of money for her. Chiquita grew up nervous, and remained that way due to my mom's apparently complete lack of ability to train a dog! She wasn't really ever mine of course, she was the family dog. My many attempts to train her never stuck, partly because I didn't know what I was doing as a kid, and partly because nobody else would ever enforce the training.

Most of the people in her life knew her as the thing that attached itself to their ankles when they came to visit my house. My relatives all thought we were crazy for keeping the "rat-dog" around, and they frequently spoke of kicking her over obstacles, or letting her go to the coyotes, or other such activities. But around my family, and the people she trusted, she was the sweetest little thing. She slept in my mom's bed. And I mean under the sheets! She made a good hot-water bottle. She had the best sad, big brown eyes you can imagine. And her little personality quirks were just hilarious. When under the bedsheets, she would insist on scratching repeatedly to get rid of all the sheet-wrinkles. Her favourite food was carrots. She unwrapped presents at Christmas time, and always "helped" Mom with the garden hose. She chased not sticks, but pebbles!

Another thing about this dog... she may have been tiny, but she was a tough-as-nails survivor! Some of her exploits include...

• attempting to battle a horse (a horse against a chihuahua. She was nearly stepped on!)
• escaping out the car window as a puppy when we were in another city; almost got lost forever.
• getting a door shut on her because she was near-invisible against a wooden floor
• getting run over by a bike (this was me. She stopped and turned around as I was riding up the trail towards her. And I felt SO bad when it happened, I sped home and locked myself in my room because I was sure I'd just killed our dog and no-one would ever forgive me.)
• jumping out the back of our truck while it was moving.
• getting kicked by rednecks wearing steel-toed boots...
• running to the end of the rope and flipping herself out of her collar in her attempts to bite passersby.
• fending off a legion of cats while guarding an escaped hamster (okay, not really life-threatening for the dog, but it did actually happen! That hamster would've been toast if it wasn't for her!)
• actually getting hit by a car while she was doing the stupid "must chase moving wheels" behaviour.

All in all, she was the sort of dog that existed before people treated dogs as part of the family. She got by on cheap cat kibble and table scraps, went to the vet maybe three times in her life, was never fixed (and had one litter of puppies because Mom wanted to sell them). The little champ was finally brought down, by cancer. Mom took her to the vet, for one of the very few times in her life that she ever went, and had her put to sleep. We knew it was the right decision, and I'm proud of my mom for letting her go when it was time. The dog already had cataracts covering both eyes, nasty old-dog teeth, and had definitely lost her hearing. It was time and I know it. But I'm still going to miss her being there when I visit.

So here's to Chiquita. February 15, 1999 - November 19, 2013. She's the reason I strove to learn so much more about dogs, and about how to give them a better life than the one she lived.