The one and only!

Ouch, this will be a hard posting… to write about our very dear Carlota and not have our so loving and so beloved Companion around us any longer is very difficult. It’s hard, it’s painful and its not pleasant…

Thank you VERY MUCH for all your warm emails and phone calls on her passing. Although far away from us, you were all very close to us in these last 2 days! She passed away in her sleep in the early hours of Monday. Her heart just did not take the stress and stopped beating.

Of course, there is no need for us to say here, how very difficult this is, because although we are talking about a dog, she was totally part of our lives, a complete member of our family who, by the way happened to have 4 legs. As many of you know, she was simply a human being who looked like a dog (some might even say a Gremlin) and a dog that was so ugly with supersize lips/tongue and a crooked tooth sticking out that she became cute.

These last 3 months after we left HK, were especially great and we mean it, because she REALLY participated in EVERYTHING we did. We have no idea what was going on inside her mind about this whole pilgrimage from Asia to Central America via Africa but, never mind, we were all together and that was awesome!

To say that the four of us (poor David, don’t want to drag him into this “super love for dogs thing”, that some might not see as normal) are grieving is so obvious that it is like saying that the sun will rise tomorrow. In the middle of all this grief, we are choosing, also as a tribute to Carlota’s attitude towards life, to be SO VERY TOTALLY GRATEFUL that she did not die from any of the many flights she had to endure lately, or the extra heat in Miami, or from green water puddles in Angola, or cancer that would have made her suffer for a very long period of time and also for Joel and I never having even to consider taking the decision of putting her to sleep. We are very grateful she went quickly and kind of peacefully for her own sake! Amen to that!

We have been trying to find words in either Portuguese, our mother tongue, English or now in Spanish to express our total satisfaction to have lived ALL that we lived with Carlotinha, but have not found anything that could really express how fantastic these 12 years with her were!! Yes she was a very naughty dog, no she was no saint, yes she did have a bit of an attitude but all these naughty doings of madam, were only good reasons for a delicious laughter just a few minutes after they happened.


Thank you Carlota, Cacá, Carlotinha or Pititica, thank you, it was an amazing adventure to have you as part of our family! Again, we are at a loss for words, so as cheesy as this sounds, you Carlota, will be forever in our memories and you will live forever in our hearts!!