Some (ok, most) of the pictures aren’t terribly technically perfect, but back in 2007 I was still learning. I’ve included them anyway, many of them I haven’t posted before, I hope fans of Kaya will enjoy them, and the memories that go along with them, as much as I do.

One of the first photos I took of her on the day we brought her home at 9 weeks old. What a cutie hey? And such intelligence already in those eyes.

I think this was probably the first night or so that we had her. So playful!

Chewing sticks was one of her favourite pastimes from the word go.

So little!

I used to take her out to work with me (on a horse property) every day. She was absolutely fascinated by the kitten out there, all she wanted to do was play with him. Luckily he was pretty tolerant, perhaps a little too tolerant at times as we had to rescue him from her big Great Dane puppy cuddles and paw pats on a number of occasions!

Only a few week after we got her, her ears started going haywire. First just the one went up, then both, then they crossed over intermittently. We were told we could tape them to make them lie down and flat, but I’m glad we didn’t. They ended up giving her so much character!

She was so serious at times, and yet such a clown at others. Of course she turned the serious face on when I was trying to get a nice photo with her!

Being a Great Dane puppy and growing so fast, she used to sleep a lot. It’s hard work, growing those big long legs!

We started taking her to the beach as soon as she was old enough. Mostly we went on the surf side, so she was pretty reluctant to go very deep into the water due to the waves and whitewash. We decided that it might be a good idea to introduce her to the idea of swimming by going to the calm side of the beach and luring her into the water with a stick. Clever idea, but she was a lot cleverer than we thought! You can almost see the cogs turning in her head here: “Hmm stick.. I want the stick.. but that would involve going into that deeper water, and I’m not so sure about that.. not how much exactly do I want that stick? Enough to go for a swim to get it?”  The answer this time around was no, she she didn’t actually start swimming properly until later on.

She came to work with me every day and started off sitting in the passenger seat. She fitted for all of about 2 months, until it came time to upgrade to the back seat. She was always so good in the car.

This may have been the point at which she decided “You know what? I’m gonna be a model. That will be my occupation. Adoration, flattery and special priviledges, that’s me!”  Lucky I loved her so much and lucky she was cute, or I might have kicked her out of my light tent for leaving muddy paw prints everywhere on the nice white fabric. But who could say no to this?

On one of our daily walks, we met Digby. Digby is a fawn Great Dane too and lives just a few houses down the road. They hit it off instantly, as you can see from the photo. Or rather, Kaya hit it off, but Digby was just scared of the bizarre faces she was making…

At about 4-5 months old, due to some issues with dry food we were having, we decided to switch Kaya to a raw meat diet. No complaints from her!

She started looking heaps better (she went through a bit of a skinny, hair falling out stage) and we knew we’d made the right decision.

Despite making the decision to be a doggy model early, she did make sure the modelling was on her terms. If she didn’t feel like it, or didn’t like my art direction, she would protest by just flopping down on the ground. Here, we were trying to get her to sit next to Dave for a height comparison photo (compared to her a month ago), but she wasn’t having a bar of it!

Starting to look pretty grown up at about 5 months old.

Cuddles with her Dad.

Still looking pretty puppy-ish here though, with those crazy ears and head wrinkles!

We bought her an Octopus soft stuffed toy, half thinking it might get destroyed pretty quickly. She proved us wrong! She loved it and used to spend ages flailing around wildly on her back chewing it and throwing at around, Kaya legs and octopus legs alike flying all over the place.

She established the park down the road from us as ‘her’ park pretty early on.

Heading into winter, the nights started getting a bit cooler and since she used to sleep outside at night (I know! so mean!) we thought we better build her a kennel. It was as great weekend project, and Kaya approved, so that was the main thing. We made it big enough to accommodation two Danes as we’d always planned to get another. The kennel lasted about a month before we took pity on Princess Kaya and decided to let her sleep inside instead.

One of her favourite activities down at the park was racing around madly in the childrens playground. I think the sand reminded her of the beach and sent her a little crazy!

She always loved our weekend trips to the beach, we rarely missed a day. I love this photo of me and her at The Spit.

Instead of forcing her into the waves (a pretty mean feat for the size dog she was becoming anyway) we decided to try and make it fun for her, so we played lots of running and chasing games in the surf to make her realise it wasn’t so scary after all.

She was always amazing with other dogs, friends with big and small, young and old. She had no qualms about letting the little ones chase her around!

With humans young and old, she was the same. Always curious, never scared, always friendly and wanting to be part of everything. And so patient with the little ones!

And with her annoying parents who made her do embarrassing things like give them kisses…

Always up for a game, she totally understood the concept of sharing, without needing to be taught.

Baths however, were another story. She did NOT. LIKE. BATHS. And expressed her extreme displeasure at the process by looking terribly pitiful at every opportunity.

She wasn’t entirely mistreated however. We started off with a rule that she wasn’t allowed on the couch. At about 6 months old, she’d won us over sufficiently so we allowed her her own section of the couch. That later expanded to include the entire couch. And then, we bought another couch, just for her, so we could have the original one back for us.

Kaya had many ‘best friends’ – doggies she met at the beach and on walks that that got on famously with and just loved to be around. Winnie the Doberman cross was one of these. Her and Winnie used to get along like best friends, with Winnie often coming over for playdates. Unfortunately Winnie had to leave this earth early as well, so I hope they have found each other up there and are happily continuing their games in doggy heaven!

Kaya did tend to be a little bit accident prone, needing a couple of visits to the vet due to various cuts and scrapes. To help in healing and so she didn’t lick her stitches, the vet gave us a ‘lampshade’ to use. Kaya was MOST unimpressed.

Though so tolerant of all the other injustices we subjected to her on a regular basis.

My little beach baby, she was about 7 months here, and getting big!

She was so funny with rubber bands, taking an end gently in her teeth and pulling back repeatedly and rhythmically. Stretchy stretchy! So gentle.

Tashi, my Mum’s Tibetan Terrier, stayed with us a few times. They used to have the funniest play fights – Tashi a furious ball of hair and snarls and jumps – and Kaya with her legs going in every which direction trying to find an opening and avoid the nips!

They did play together nicely though as well.

At about 7-8 months old, we took Kaya back to visit her parents. I swear she knew them instantly, going straight into submissive puppy mode.

Isn’t her Dad handsome? He’s one of the main reasons we decided to get Kaya!

When we (the evil horrible parents we are) took her in to be desexed, she felt pretty sorry for herself for a couple of days. Tashi was there to keep her company though.

Kaya absolutely adored her Grandma, never leaving her side when she visited. She always had to know exactly what Grandma was doing. At Christmas one year when her Grandma arrived, she got so excited she jumped up and put two big muddy pawprints on Grandma’s nice white top. This was pretty amazing for Kaya as she was well trained to never jump up on people, this was the only time she ever did it that I know of! Just goes to show how much she loved her Grandma. Grandma forgave her, of course!

She was great with my brothers three young children too, acting as their guardian here on a trip to the beach.

As they were growing up, Kaya and Digby used to have sleepovers and playdates. They really were so cute together – awww – young love!

At about 8 or 9 months old, I took this photo of Kaya. It remains my favourite ever photo of her, and got me started on the path to seriously considering being a dog photographer.

I just love this one of her as well, you can almost see the intelligence brimming out of those amber eyes.

A friend took this photos of the three of us at the beach, one of Kaya’s favourite places in the world.

We noticed she was actually getting quite tall, especially compared to the kitchen benches! Thankfully not too tall and big her her boots to give her Dad a kiss though.

For a big doggy, she was a pretty agile one! She loved doing jumps and climbing on things at the agility park.

Though she still managed to look like a big goofy puppy when the situation called for it.

We used to walk almost every morning, she was my trusty companion, always leading the way on the trail.

I’ll always treasure these shots of the both of us.

At about 9-10 months old, with the help of her friend Zephyr who loved to swim, we finally got her swimming!

Zephyr was her boyfriend, she luuurrved him.

Our newest addition, Luna, arrived when Kaya was about 11 months old. She was immediately accepted into the family. This is their very first night together!

When the next day rolled around, the serious playing began. And never stopped.

Kaya was everything a big doggy sister should be – patient, gentle, careful and very, very tolerant! Luna was cheeky little thing from day one, and Kaya handled her like a pro.

They were a perfect match, we couldn’t have asked for better siblings.

Such a patient girl – “Sure, I’ll let myself be dragged around by the collar by this small child about half the size of me, no problem! Why not!”

At nearly one, Kaya was starting to look like a real Great Dane. We wondered if those long legs would ever stop growing though! Supermodel legs, I always said.

Kaya’s first birthday, waiting to eat her present. Contrary to what the biscuit says, she was not a bad dog! Quite the opposite in fact, probably about the best dog ever! But then, I’m pretty biased.

Instalment 2 of my tribute to Kaya will follow at some stage. I hope you enjoyed sharing her with me.

Charlotte x

I think the pics are a bit strange, they’re fuzzy and kinda brown and  just show me sleeping. But I guess they are cool. Even if just because of the subject matter (me).

Not to be left out, I made sure I got special cuddles too.

Mum explained to me that today was a special day cos Luna was getting sprayed. We were going to go for a long drive up to the city and we had to leave her at the vet place all day, and pick her up again tonight.

The bit I don’t understand is, why does she have to go all the way up there to get sprayed? Mum and Dad spray us all the time with the hose in the front yard. I guess it must be some kind of special spray.

I kinda hoped that it was all some kind of joke and that we were actually just going to the beach (you can get sprayed there too with the waves!), but nope, we headed in totally the wrong direction.

When we got there, we both had to stand on a measuring platform kinda thing to see how heavy we were. I thought I would be way heavier cos I am heaps taller, but I was only 53 kilograms! Luna the little fatty was 50 kg! After that, Luna went into a little room where they did strange things to her (glad I wasn’t her when they stuck that thing up her bum – ewww!) and then Mum took her out the back with the nice lady and then came back without her.

That was it! Luna was gone!

On the way home, we stopped for some breakfast for Dad. I was a bit sad cos Luna was gone, so he gave me some of his muffin. I thought I better bung on the sad and upset show for a bit longer and politely declined.

But I made sure I kept a close eye on it so I could eat it when I got home.

So that’s it so far – now I’m at home, Mum is about to go to work, and later on we are going to pick up Luna from the spraying place (I hope she won’t be too wet).

EDIT: Ok Mum just informed me that I got it wrong – the word is “SPEY” not “SPRAY”. Oops! So apparently it’s nothing to do with getting wet with water, and more to do with something that happened to me a while ago.