To all those who knew (or knew of) Kasha "Cashew":

Kasha, a beautiful chocolate Sharpei, came to us in June from TnT Sharpei Rescue after I fell head over heels in love with her at an adoption interview that ended up not working out. I'll never forget as she came racing toward the door to meet me, and I giggled, as it was the first Sharpei I had met who acknowledged there was a person in the house!! ;o)

She was a special girl right off the get go. She seemed very aloof, didn't care for toys and didn't like to be touched. We wondered at first what the heck we had gotten ourselves into, but proving that you can never judge an animal by the first few days, over the 6 months we had our Kasha Cashew she became very attached to us. One day when I had a really bad cold and spent the whole day in bed, she wandered into our bedroom and just laid down beside the bed and wanted me to pet her for hours. On the days where she had more energy, she would follow me and play bow, asking me to play "TAG" with her, chasing her around the kitchen until she decided, "Yeah, I'm done with this game", and went and laid down on her bed.

The other very special thing about Kasha was that she had an enlarged heart that caused her many problems. We saw two specialists and got the same diagnosis: primary pulmonary hypertension, which means the blood vessels running to her lungs created a lot of resistance to the blood trying to pump through them, and so the heart just pumped harder & harder trying to get the blood through. A normal pressure on the right side of the heart for dogs was about 5, and Kasha's was anywhere from 120 - 170 at any given time. Dr. Janet Nieckarz, a wonderful & supportive radiologist from Canada West, explained that it was very rare to have this disease as a "primary" diagnosis, it is usually secondary to some other condition, and therefore there was no medication developed for this problem, and very little timeline of life.

The morning of Dec 31st, I got up for a job I was doing with a friend, patted Kasha on the head and left. Later on Kasha went out with my boyfriend, Jon, as usual for her morning pee. As she began her business, she fell over and began seizuring. Jon rushed over, but Kasha just popped back up on her feet as if nothing happened and walked over to the front door. He brought her back inside, laid her down on her bed, and she huffed & huffed trying to catch her breath.

Jon began petting her & letting her know that it was okay, as the space between the breaths got longer and eventually stopped altogether.

Even though I knew it would be coming, it was a shock to get the phone call: "Kasha's gone." She was our little dear, who jumped up and raced into the living room every time she heard the guinea pigs squealing for their dinner. Or who got up and lumbered over to her food bowl if the cat wandered a little too close to it, she never showed the cat any aggression, just a "Yeah, right, you think you're getting any of THAT?!?! Think again buddy!!!" Our first night without her seemed so empty: no click-clack of her nails on the floor, no staring at us in the middle of the night from our bed side and scaring the crap out of us, no morning wag of the tail and jump around the kitchen to say, "Geez, what took you so long to get up?!?!" We spent most of yesterday out driving, not wanting to come home to a house that feels so empty.

Jon & I would just like to thank everyone for their support (emotional, financial, and spiritual) for us and for our Kasha Cashew.

Whether you listened to us struggle with the state of her condition, or listened to the stories we would tell of our silly gal, or helped out with the cost of the work-up it took to figure out exactly what was going on with her heart, we thank you.

Kasha Cashew had a beautiful spirit.

Thank you again,

Katie & Jon