Miss Champaign Bubbles
Nov. 13, 1994 to March 30, 2006
May she rest in peace.

Bubbly came to us through a phone call as we were talking to a friend in Champaign, IL.  It turned out he was a breeder and offered to give her to us.  I remember being on the phone and asking Don if he wanted a Shar Pei and the rest is history.  He brought her to us on New Year's Day 1995. Miss Champaign Bubbles! We spent the next 5 years in Chicago as she taught us how to take care of her and spent most of our time with her.  When we stayed out too late she would trash the house and demand that we stay home more. After a couple of trashed couches and beds later we learned our lesson.  Fighting the freezing temperatures in Chitown and poor Bubbly trying to pee in the snow while her feet froze, we soon ventured west to a warmer climate.

Spending the next 5+ years in Southern California was great for the Bubbly. She didn't care for swimming in the ocean and hated every other animal she met, so the dog beach was out. We had her favorite chair in the window so she could see us come and go and watch the neighborhood churn. Soon she demanded we take her everywhere with her, so we obliged. Whenever we were not at work, Bubbly was riding in the car with us going wherever we went.  Typically she would join us as we went out to dinner, waiting in dark parking lots for us to return.  During the heat of Summer she would have to stay cool at home. She'd always be waiting in the window on her chair to see us return.

After getting a tooth pulled that wouldn't heal in Feb. 2005 she soon began to slowly stop eating. The vet determined it was lymphoma cancer and we only had a matter of days unless we chose to fork out the cash and dedicate our lives to her in her final days...which we did. Her first chemo treatment was April 6, 2005. After a couple months of feeling like hell, dealing with the nausea, diarrhoea, bloody, mucus stools, etc. the cancer slowly began to go into remission. She slowly felt better through the year and by the Fall and Winter she was back to feeling like her old self again. We spent all of our time with her, going for ice cream, to the beach park, going to every park around town, every restaurant parking lot, etc. We took all the pictures we could doing everything with her. She was living the good life and we enjoyed every minute we had with her while we could. We knew it was only a matter of time.

In March 2006 we decided to skip a treatment since she was feeling so good...bad idea. Within days she began to feel bad. We did another chemo treatment, changing the prescription, and she went downhill fast. Within days she felt like hell and couldn't sleep, eat, and barely walked. We checked her into the vet hospital and all efforts failed to make her feel better. Her system couldn't process all the meds they were giving her. We all felt like hell and decided to let her go. Paying our final visit with her in the hospital we said our goodbyes and put her to sleep before the final injection. We balled our eyes out for days and felt empty inside. She now rests here in a box of ashes on the dining room table awaiting our final release back to Mother Nature. We miss her dearly.