NO, YOU MAY NOT CREATE A MATE, LOVE INTEREST/"CRUSHER", FAMILY MEMBER, OR ANY OTHER RELATION FOR THIS CHARACTER. THANK YOU.

Name: Kahlei

Gender: Female

Species: Dog; Icelandic Sheepdog

Relation to Balto: Lives with and is the adoptive pup of Balto's daughter, Kanti.

.oOo.

Personality: Bubbly and energetic, Kahlei has a very happy-go-lucky attitude about life. She tends to be a bit of a goofball and loves to cheer people up. Because she was "abandoned" as a pup (see history for more details), she tends to be very sympathetic towards "outcasts" and others in a lower or less fortunate position and she can get very defensive and snappy argueing for them. For her, the greatest possible offense is to leave someone out. She is extremely faithful/loyal to her owners, Allison and Charles, as well as for her adoptive parents*, Kanti and Cole.

Kahlei loves to play and tends to be a bit of a goofball, especially around her friends. Her constant enthusiasm can sometimes go too far, though, and annoy other dogs. Some accuse her of not taking anything seriously (though that's not entirely true).

Kaheli has always fantasized about the idea of falling in love and was thrilled to when Kanti and Cole eventually became mates. However, she was always a bit too naiive in her fantasies to fall in "true love" herself. She had a few breif crushes over her life (no, you may not design one), but no one dog ever stood out, much less "liked" her back in that way.

Kahlei admires the racing dogs and sometimes wishes she could be one. Her birth was some years after the serum run, but Kanti has told her the stories of what Balto and the others did. She has sort of a hero-worship relationship with Balto and likes to see and talk with him when she can. She also admires Balto's background of being and orphan, yet still raising fame, as it reminds her of her own early life and inspires her to work hard.

Unlike Kanti, whose prefers to deal with logic and reason, Kahlei tends to let her actions be guided more by her feelings than her thoughts. She has a big heart, as well as a sharp intuition, and she trusts easily, but if someone happends to offend her, she can also hold a grudge, sometimes for very long times depending on the severity of the offense. She also has a tendency to act a bit immature about it, sometimes resorting to the "silent treatment".

*Kanti tends to be more of her adoptive mother than Cole her father, but because Cole later became Kanti's mate, he is like her father by default. However, though she is friends with Cole, she doesn't quite have the same kind of relationship with him as she does with Kanti.

.oOo.

History: Kahlei's mother, who lived in a town relatively close to Nome, was never supposed to have pups. When it turned out that she was going to, her owner became very upset, not wanting to have to deal with birth, raising the pups, and finding homes for them, and he slowly began to distance himself from the dog in preference of other dogs. Kahlei's mother sensed this change and began taking longer and longer walks away from home to get away from the tense atmosphere. Eventually, about a week before her pups were born, she ran away from town, going as far as her legs could take her.

Unfortunately, that had been a very bad judgement on her part. She had always relied on humans for her food and necessities and wasn't much of a hunter, not to mention the added tire that came from carrying her litter. She found food by scavanging, though she wasn't able to eat much before a larger predator took over the kill.

Her pups were born soon after; a litter of four. She raised the litter the best she could, but with her limited knowlege of the wilderness and general care of pups, by the time they were beginning to get teeth, only Kahlei and her brother remained, and they weren't really the healthiest or best-fed pups in the world. The weather was beginning to grow colder, and the changing of the seasons brought with them the first snowstorm of the winter. Kahlei's brother did not survive. 

Determined and instinct-driven to keep her final pup alive, Kahlei's mother exerted all her energy into caring for the growing pup. As the winter went on, though, food became harder and harder to find. Kahlei's mother had hardly eaten at all since Kahlei was weaned, giving as much food as she could to her daughter. She began to grow weak, and the weaker she became, the harder it got to get the food. Kahlei was still too young to search for food on her own, and she weakened, as well. A combination of exhaustion, starvation, and the cold weather finally took the mother's life. She fell asleep wrapped around her daughter to keep her warm, but never again woke.

Kahlei, of course, was devestated when she woke up that she could not rouse her mother. As a realization dawned on her that the older dog was dead, she was in shock. She stumbled back and sat in place for a while, unsure of how to react or what to do. She stayed by her dead mother for a while, but eventually left out of desparation for food.

The partly-grown pup wandered around for about two days, and was extremely fortunate not to have gotten picked at by predators. Her energy was lowering, though, and she was very, very hungry. On the second day, she collapsed in a snowbank, unable to get up. She closed her eyes and laid there in defeat. It seemed she was preparing to reunite with her mother and siblings.

As fate would have it, though, salvation came that day in the form of a young female teenager out on a leisurely ride with two older dogs, a small, relatively young reddish wolfdog and a slightly older husky-like mutt with a dismal gray coat. The human girl picked her up gently with concern in eyes that Kahlei could not open her own to see. She merely squeaked pitifully, causing the human girl to gasp. The pup was alive! And before she knew it, she was being rushed off to a place that she would later come to know as the town of Nome.

The girl who had found her, Allison, was quick to alert her caretaker, Charles, about the pup that she'd discovered in the snow. Conveniently enough, Charles was a retired veterinarian and he knew what to do. Though Kahlei's condition was critical, he managed to slowly nurse her back to health. He and Allison kept her as part of the family.

In her initial few weeks for coming back to health, Kahlei was very shy and quiet. The only other individuals she'd known in her life were her mother and siblings, who were all rather quiet and somewhat hard-edged due to desparate circumstances. As she began to grow and become more healthy, and as both the humans and the dogs continued to pour out love and kindness to her, she opened up. Her fears began to sooth and her fearful and uncertain feelings were being replaced with trust and compassion. She grew especially close to Kanti, of whom she thought of as a second mother. Kanti, likewise, grew ferociously protective of the pup.

When she was about a year and a half old, Kahlei recieved very rudimentary sled training from Allison and was added to the mini-team, which also consisted of Cole and Kanti. They weren't much of a real team and certainly weren't racers, but it was a fun and relaxing activity for all of them, and it gave her a chance to get some of her energy out. Kanti began telling stories of her father, Balto, and the maginificent race he'd run to save the children of Nome. Kahlei was fascinated by these stories and began to dream of being a racer. As she got older, these dreams faded slightly, but she still admired the racing teams and particularly Balto, with whom she developed a bit of a hero-worship. She enjoyed talking to him when she could and was paying very much attention during the mail race in which both Balto and her adoptive uncle, Kodi, ran. Balto was always happy to fill her in on details that Kanti had missed or not known.

A bit later in their lives, Cole and Kanti declared themselves mates, much to Kahlei's delight. She was very intrigued by the idea of love (though she herself never did have a mate) and sensed long ago that the two had feelings for each other. Kanti did give birth to a single litter of five when Kahlei was about three years old. She was very excited about it--perhaps even more so than Kanti, who didn't entirely share Kahlei's affinity for young pups and was rather nervous about the whole ordeal. Kahlei helped to keep her spirits high, though, and when the pups were born, she was always happy to help watch them. As they grew, she became like an aunt to them all. Her childlike nature made it easy for her to get along with them.

Despite her rough beginnings, Kahlei lived a long and good life with Allison, Charles, and Kanti's family. She died of a simple sickness instentified by old age when she was a little over fifteen years old, outliving both Kanti and Cole by a couple of years.

.oOo.

Notes about her design:
*Her eyebrows are the same color as her eyepatches.
*Her eyes aren't supposed to be quite that red. They're supposed to be more of a russet-ish color, somewhat similar to Jenna's. I just couldn't find a more suitable marker. XD
*The left sock is just slightly higher than the right sock.
*She naturally has a bit of a thickset build, in addition to long fur, but she's not overweight.

Fancharacter and artwork shown © 2013 NattiKay.