There is so much we can say about our little Angie it is hard to know where to begin. Angie came into our lives on December 13, 2002. We fell instantly in love with her the night she walked across her foster parent’s yard to come greet us. I don’t know a person who ever met Angie who didn’t love her or at least make some comment about her. People would stop us on the street, in parks, in stores, at any vet we ever went to, just to ask us about her. She had a love for life like no other animal or person I have ever known. We gave her the formal name of Angelina Rose, but she had many nicknames. She was our little butter bean.

Angie had a collar that her foster mom made that had beautiful angel and heart buttons all the way around it. Angie adored her collar; over the four years she was with us I had to redo the collar a few times by removing all the buttons and sewing them back onto a new collar. Any time this would happen Angie would sit by me, waiting for her collar to be finished. Angie also had many comments on her beautiful collar, as it suited her so well. When we adopted Angie we knew about her kidney condition, and were told from the start that this would shorten her life. But we didn’t care, we just wanted to give her the best life she could possible have while she was here. After caring for our Lhasa Apso for seventeen years a few pills and vet visits didn’t bother us. Angie didn’t mind the vet, as we had visits to check her blood pressure and kidney levels regularly. At Christmas of 2005 Angie gave us a very big scare. After routine blood work the vet told us her kidney levels were alarmingly high, we rushed her to South Paws. She spent the week of Christmas there and came home on New Years Day. They told us that she was in Kidney failure and to expect about six months to a year. She pulled through this scare and was such a fighter we didn’t want to believe the prognosis.

Slowly but surely her kidneys declined. We did subcutaneous IV treatments at home off and on for months. All the while our vet was absolutely amazed at her love of life, he told us several times he had never seen a dog with these levels doing as well as Angie. Her condition didn’t seem to faze her. She loved life so much; she never had a down day and was never in a bad mood. The one thing Angie was known for was her kisses. She loved to give kisses, and she just never could stand still, she was always so excited. The week Angie’s kidneys completely failed there were no more kisses. That is how we knew. Angie passed away at home, in our arms on December 14, 2006. We miss Angie ever day, even though we have our beagle Emma and two baby girls our house seems empty without her. Our two year old daughter still talks about the things she will give her when she comes home. We are sad because we know there will never be another Angie. People have told us so many times how lucky she was to have had us, but we don’t feel that way at all, we were absolutely the lucky ones to have had her. We know she is at peace now, out of a little body that made her so sick, and we know we will be greeted by her kisses again some day.

Cindy and Mike Kessler