I found Skye in the streets of Rangiora on a cold May evening back in 2009.
I was driving to some friends for a BBQ that night when I noticed some big eyes reflecting in my headlights from underneath a car parked on the side of West Belt Road. The short story is that, instead of arriving with something more typical for a BBQ, I arrived with a live dog!
The long story is, upon seeing her eyes, I turned my car around to ensure she wasn’t injured or otherwise in trouble. She was very scared, cold, thin and grubby but, with some gentle coaxing from me whilst I sat on the roadside curb, she belly crawled towards me slowly with the slightest wag of her tail.
She had only a piece of red string around her neck with no other tags nor collars on. I managed to reassure her enough to get a makeshift collar and lead on her and then did a very quick and gentle veterinary check on her to make sure she had no obvious wounds or injuries.
I then went to my car, opened it up and in she leapt with no hesitation like we had been together forever!
I then went door to door on the local street asking if anyone knew where she had come from but to no avail.
So, onto the BBQ I went. My friends still tease me about this – “sorry I am late, I found a dog…”. Fortunately, my friends are total dog lovers too so they were happy to help and we got Skye fed and watered and allowed her some time in their fenced garden under supervision with their dogs – she was a super star and, although a bit timid, you could already see her playful nature although she had been thrust into quite a change of circumstances!
I wasnt really in a position to take on a dog at the time (so I thought!) so I rang the local council to see if they could help try and reunite her with her rightful owner.
Skye spent 7 days in the Waimakariri Council pound with me ringing daily to see if anyone had come forward. Nope. On day 7, I drove back to Rangiora and picked her up, watching her leap ecstatically into my car again! I estimated she must have been about 5 yrs old at this time.
She had no known name so I came up with the name Skye and she took to it like a proverbial duck to water.
And, the rest is history. Skye became my “heart dog”; a soul who changed everything and then, quietly, became everything to me.
Skye saw me through a lot of tough times in my life as a lady trying to run my own business and navigate life as a single woman in her 40s (that is another story!).
She went pretty much everywhere with me from Waiheke to Bluff and everywhere in between. She was with me throughout all the terrifying earthquakes we experienced here in Canterbury. I saw her through every Guy Fawkes (she hated fireworks – I have never seen a dog quivering so much in fear). She checked out my (now) husband, giving him a lick of approval before eventually becoming our ring bearer at our wedding in 2016.
On February 14th, 2019, I diagnosed Skye with renal disease and was completely devastated when, only 2 months later on April 14th, 2019, she was put to sleep at our Te Anau home whilst having fallen asleep between my husband and me, her job done after almost 10 years together.
I wanted more time of course but not to be.
She is gone from this mortal coil but she shall never be forgotten and she remains my Skye.
The next morning, we drove her down to a crematorium in Invercargill and it was impossibly hard leaving her there. It was also hard knowing what to do with her ashes that came back to us in a simple cardboard box a few days later.
I started by sprinkling a little of them in lots of the places we travelled together (and there are still some places I need to go back to with her!) and then made some into Pandora-like jewelry beads with a skilled glass artist in Nelson but the bulk remained in that cardboard box which didn’t quite seem dignified enough for my Skye.
Finally, 7years after her passing, in March 2026, I found out about Reterniti and went to meet their awesome team. That was it – I decided that a Reterniti stone was just the perfect way to honour her and I love it. It is perfect, like Skye.
Doing what I now do professionally for families facing the same grief, I hope I adequately express how I truly understand what they are facing. I get it. To plagiarise the words of CS Lewis (1961, A Grief Observed) : “Her absence is like the Sky, spread over everything”
Dr Helen R. Milner
