Hi I come from a family that has bred, raised and showed many breeds of dogs and I’ve loved everything about our extended family. Mark meet Killian. Killian ignited and extinguished this love. He has been my last and it’s been more than 7 years. I have hundreds of stories, but I feel his last story is fitting. Killian was a Bullmastiff and in his hayday was, in appearance, a Pitt Bull on roides, in reality a lap pup with 150lbs. of nope, not my lap! He was the last of the litter in Corte Madera, Ca. and spent that first evening at 14lbs. on my shoulder looking out the window on the way home….that image lives on!!! His last day with me precludes a great story. I was 31, spent the day in surgery and came home to no (KP) K-puppy. Had he ecaped again?

I spent the next 2 monthes reporting, posting and following up on leads. Tthe town I lived in, the animal control knew him well (because of the frequency of incarceration) and his buddy Shemp (frequent inmate and also a big-lug-Bullmastiff). They too were baffled. You see, a dog of his size doesn’t say missing for long, there are bill to be paid when they’re killed by cars and shot for “helping himself” or any of the other “noble”(I have reimbursement receipts) ventures I’ve been accustomed to. This was different…..much different. 9 months had pasted and I had settled into acceptance (that he had simply evaporated) when a Vet (not that kind but I thank him for his service) came into my shop and said, about Shemp, “Beautiful dog, I just worked on a dog just like him today (we don’t run into dogs as “economical” as a Bullmastiff in the San Francisco Bay Area often) my ears perked up and I looked at Shemps daddy and he at me. I said, “What did he look like?”. He began to decribe Killian right down to the “cross-eyes”….minus two…well….he nuetered a 10 year old. Mark….what happened next will “not blow you away” as a lawyer in this country. It was unbeliveable to get any answers, I had to go from the animal control to the police to the animal control to the police and finally got some cooperation when I got the vetenarians office to give me the name of the “thief”/ owner (would love to tell this story to you too….it’s huge). Killian never recovered from his surgery, he continued to get weaker and smile less. I gave him hugs and spent lots of time with him but still he became less of Killian as I struggled. On a cold Winters morning, when I was sure I could help him in only one way, I picked him up and walked across the frost for my truck. I could see the labor in his breath as I whispered to him to ease and reassure one of us. He took his last breath in my arms as I lay him in the truck and I cried as I drove.

Jeff from CA