Our first dog…Kira

Bare with me, I’m feeling a little nostalgic and wanted to go back and share some memories of our first dog my husband and I got as a couple. We weren’t married yet, had just gotten possession of our house and my then boyfriend, now husband, told me that if I found a rottweiler he would buy it for me. So I started the research to find a reputable breeder that bred for temperament. I found a breeder and we picked our first puppy out. She was the sweetest little thing, so eager to please. Her registered name was “Dionne’s Dazzling Diamond” but we called her Kira. 

She was our first dog as a couple, but not the first dog either of us had had before. We had both grown up on farms and had dogs as kids. But this was the first one that was just ours, that we had picked and we could do all the training with. And did I ever jump into training. She was so eager to please. Training her was a joy. She learned how to do things so quickly. I read everything I could read about training and fully embraced clicker training with her. She caught on to things quickly so before long I was reading trick books so we could keep teaching her new things. She loved to learn and I loved to see how quickly she caught on to things. She was a complete little helper around the house. We often sent her to find the phone and the remote. I sent her with notes to my hubby when supper was ready and he was working outside. She was amazing. So amazing in fact that she was our ringbearer/flower girl at our wedding. She carried the rings down the aisle to my husband for us. The picture featured on this post is on our wedding day when she was carrying them down the aisle. 

When she was 5 I ended up rescuing a rottie cross named Gunner. He was 9 months old and we were his 7th home, but I will share his story in another post. They didn’t love each other at first but within no time at all they were best buds and inseparable. 

Unfortunately for us the Christmas that Kira turned 9 she ended up with a bad limp on her front leg, nothing seemed to touch the pain for her. So as soon as we got back home I brought her to the veterinarian.  By the end of January after numerous tests she was diagnosed with osteosarcoma (bone cancer). We did a leg amputation and chemotherapy. And we were lucky enough to get 6 more wonderful months with her. She cruised around on 3 legs like nobody’s business. People often took a while to even notice she was missing a leg. But by June she had developed a cough, and when we did x-rays of her chest we saw that her lungs were full of tumours. Her cancer had spread. We spent the weekend with her and by then her breathing was terrible and I knew it was time to let her go. We brought her to the clinic and had her euthanized. One of the hardest days of our lives.