15/01/2025
KayLee Wooze
August 2011 - January 13 2025
Monday night my family and I said goodbye to a one of a kind dog. Anyone who met Kay Woo fell in love with her bubbly, goofy personality and her adorable gremlin face immediately.
There is so much I could say about this special dog, but I want to share the story of how Woo come into my life because I love this story, I love her and this may be the last time I get to tell it.
Let’s set the scene. It’s 2013, I am 22, I have an almost 4 year old child. My son’s father and I have broken up for good, I am eating a whole watermelon by myself with a spoon.
Not doing great.
I am introduced to this amazing sci-fi show called Firefly by a friend who thinks I’ll enjoy it.
They are right. I am obsessed. It’s helping me through this major life change.
I am deep in rescue at this time of my life. My friend and I would pull dogs from high kill shelters, foster, then rehome.
After my weekend of consuming nothing but this show and too much watermelon I head to CT with this friend. There is a pitty on the kill list that she’s interested in pulling if I can foster them. I go down with my toddler so we can see how the dog would do with my son.
We get there and this dog was not having it with the toddler. Not a fan. No worries, there are plenty of dogs on the kill list. One of them has to like kids.
For some reason this pound wouldn’t let us go inside the building to look at the dogs, but we could look at them from about 100 yards away in their outdoor kennel.
I am walking and can barely make out these dogs at this distance so I’m going off ✨vibes✨.
I see this little grey dog, jumping straight up in the air, nearly clearing the 6ft kennel. For some reason that wasn’t an omen for me that maybe this dog was a lot and maybe too much for a single mother of a toddler.
Instead I thought “hey I have always wanted a blue pitbull”
I ask them to take her out so we can meet her. She’s small but thick. There are more muscles on this dog then I knew existed on a body. She comes out and runs right to us. She ADORES my son. Squirming low so he can pet her and being so gentle.
That’s it. Deal is done. Heart stolen. I decide I’m not just going to foster her, but I’m going to keep her.
I handed the kennel worker my out of state ID and a $5 bill and she was mine.
I beg them to give her a quick bath as she is covered in urine and f***s.
The best they do is spray her off with a hose outside.
She had so much fun biting the water from the hose, it would always be one of her favorite activities.
The kennel attendant said to me “careful, clearly she’s aggressive, she’s biting the water” they were dead serious. I laughed it off, that always stuck with me even after 11 years.
We drove back up from Waterbury and I get her home. Right away she gets along with my other dog Lucy and has a truce drawn up with my cats.
Now for the name. Her name at the kennel was Hailey.
No power in the verse can stop Kaylee being cheerful (IYKYK) so she was gifted the name KayLee.
It quickly became very clear she was a dog who never lived inside. This girl was: Dog aggressive, killed small animals (literally killed a duck in front of its CHILD owners) wasn’t house broken, was a huge trash digger, would steal off the counter, dashed out the door, would never come when called, and the list goes on and on.
I’m worried I can’t handle this. I seriously consider rehoming her. I even wrote up the rehoming post.
Then by chance I land a job at a boarding kennel that also offers dog training.
I took a class with her and the rest is history.
I started learning everything about behavior and training to help my little gremlin girl live with us in a home.
Poor Kaylee had to take all of the bad training I thought was good. Anything new I learned I tried on her.
Even though I cringe and berate myself about the “training” I was told to do to help her she never lost her spirit. She never stopped being that goofy girl that charmed everyone she met.
Kaylee is the reason I’m a dog trainer. She’s the reason I’m so passionate about breed genetics, the reason I know that you can’t train out everything, you just work around them the best you can. Shes the reason I know what I know because I lived it with her. She will always be the reason I train and care for dogs like I do.
They say the dogs you get in your twenties are different. They are special because they are with you through many life stages and personal growth.
Kaylee certainly was that for me. Through my first marriage, bad separation, moving across state lines with nothing but what I could fit in my car, moving back in with my mom, moving into my first apartment, all of the personal growth changes, meeting the love of my life, having a second child, building a business and much much more over our 11 years together.
Kaylee was there.
Grumbling at me to let her under the blankets to snuggle.
Wedging herself behind my back on the couch because that was her favorite place to sleep.
Burping in faces and releasing the most deadly farts imaginable while looking at you with those puppy dog eyes.
Doing any trick possible to earn a bite of your food.
Now she’s not there anymore.
It’s too quiet now.
Her snoring is gone.
The snorting like a pig for a possible crumb of human food is gone.
The pitty scream that sounded like some weird mix of velociraptor and goat will only make me laugh through video now.
I know she will live on through all of the dogs I meet.
The ones I care for at day school.
The ones who need help finding balance with their owners with training.
The ones I meet in class with too much energy but a love of learning.
The misunderstood ones who steal your heart and make you feel crazy.
She will be in every dog I bring home for the rest of my life.
They will know a better owner and trainer because Kaylee taught me. She helped me learn to be a better person.
She is so, so missed.
