These are my dogs……

Since the title of this blog is “Costa Rica Dog Lover” I thought I would give some insight as to why I chose that name. Two of the reasons are in the photo to the left. We have two siberian huskies who will be traveling with us to Puerto Viejo in 96 days 🙂 Wiley will be seven years old this summer and Kaya will be three. We got Wiley from a rescue in Colorado six years ago when he was eight months old. We had taken our HUGE (170 pounds) alaskan malamute named Neo with us to make sure that a new dog would interact well with the dominant malamute. All of the huskies were nervous and scared with him except Wiley. Wiley just thought that Neo was playing a game when he growled and just jumped and ran around Neo and had a great time. Although it took Neo a while to warm up to Wiley, he eventually did. Our third dog, Bentley, who was a boxer/pit bull mix, just kind of hung out and did his best to put up with both of them.

Kaya was a completely unexpected addition to the pack. After Bentley died in November of 2007, we had decided to just stick with two dogs. However, that darn Petfinder website got the best of me. I was just browsing one day and came across a picture of the cutest dog I had ever seen. She was about seven months old and her story was unbelieveably sad. She had been part of a 54 dog rescue in Washington State in the Fall of 2007′ the owner of the dogs thought that it would be a great idea to have a dog sledding business and so kept breeding huskies. Twice a week, the owner would throw food out for all 54 dogs and they would fight over it since they were so hungry. Kaya had both of her back legs broken during one of the fights by the older dogs – she was only three months old. The humane society came and picked her and four other puppies up but didn’t have enough evidence to take the others until a few months later. Kaya was taken by a wonderful rescue in Spokane and it was from that rescue that I saw her picture and adopted her. Even Neo accepted her and, although Wiley was a bit unsettled by not being the new guy any more, they have become inseparable – especially after Neo died a year ago.

Wiley has epilepsy and I have been worried about how he will do in Puerto Viejo. He has not had a seizure in over two years now so I think he should be fine but I won’t be comfortable until they are both there and settled and he continues to be seizure free. Kaya will be fine. Even though she started out with a difficult life, she has had absolutely no ill effects from it. She is incredibly forgiving and is an absolutely joy to be around. She reminds me everyday that holding a grudge does no one any good. She loves everyone and pretty much everyone loves her.