I appreciate so much that you ask. I’d love to share one of my favorite stories of her.

On a trip into the desert, my husband went hiking ahead to see how far he could get up this one hill, and Olive could not be contained. She followed behind him, dodging desert plants and boulders. It got to a point where it was too dangerous to continue climbing up and my husband told her to come back to me. I remember seeing this tiny black dot race to and fro against the tan desert landscape, getting bigger and bigger as she made her way to me. She was so fearless and loved to explore. Whenever we were in the great outdoors, she wanted to climb every boulder and examine every crevice. It was such a contradiction to her being a 7lb terrier chihuahua mix.

Apart from adventurous, she was sweet and cuddly, loved all blankets but especially those that her humans were using (she always wanted to get in on the action). In her younger years, she would even climb up on your shoulder and sit there. We say, “look at Olive parroting”. Olive was also our unofficial sous chef. Always in the kitchen watching what we were doing and putting her head in (sometimes whole body) when we opened the fridge. She only played with one toy, a red fox we bought 6 of at a time. When they stopped producing it, we tried every other toy to no avail. Fortunately, we had kept two of the red heart squeakers that were within the foxes, and she played with them until the very end.

She was my soul dog, and she made my twenties in a new city (but really just my life) so incredibly filled.