The heart of Sassy Girlfriends....

🐾

An Ode to Sassy

The One Who Started It All

2026 — In Loving Memory

She was a Shih Tzu mix with the soul of a saint.

She was a ride-or-die with soft fur and steady eyes.

She was the reason there is a Sassy Girlfriends.

The Beginning

There was a time — not so long ago — when Shar was in the deepest hole she had ever known.

Not a metaphorical hole. The kind that has walls you can feel and no visible floor. The kind that whispers 'inpatient' in the quiet hours. The kind that swallows whole days and then whole weeks, and you look up and can't account for where you went.

She was in the Fog — that deepest, most consuming version of it. Functioning, technically. Getting up. Getting dressed sometimes. Surviving.

And through every single day of it, there was Sassy.

Sassy did not ask her to be okay. Sassy did not offer advice or silver linings or unsolicited perspectives on gratitude. Sassy sat with her. Followed her. Put her small warm body against Shar's and stayed there for as long as Shar needed, which was sometimes a very long time.

No matter where Shar went in the house, Sassy was there. No matter what Shar did — or didn't do — Sassy was there. She was the most consistent, unconditional, uncomplicated presence in the hardest season of Shar's life.

✦ ✦ ✦

The Name

When Shar sat down to name her business — this thing she was building for women who were where she had been, who were going through the motions without feeling any of them, who were wrapped in their own version of bubble wrap — there was only one name.

Sassy.

Not because it sounded catchy. Not because it tested well. Because the dog who sat beside her in the dark deserved to be in every single thing Shar built in the light.

Every book. Every tip card. Every journal. Every Bubble and Hoops episode. Every woman who finds her Shimmer because of SG — she finds it because Sassy was there first, in a quiet house, on a hard day, being exactly enough.

✦ ✦ ✦

The Last Day

Sassy was getting older. Shar could see it — the slowing, the greying, the way a dog who has been your whole world starts to look like someone preparing to leave it.

When the time came, Shar chose an at-home program. A team came to the house. To Sassy's home. To the place where she had always been safe, always been loved, always been most herself.

Sassy died in Shar's arms. Loved on, all the way to the end.

Shar has said goodbye to dogs before — in clinic settings, cold and fluorescent and rushed. She will not do it that way again, if she has any choice. Because what she witnessed in those final moments with Sassy was not loss made bearable. It was love made complete.

It was the most beautiful and peaceful goodbye she has ever given.

✦ ✦ ✦

What She Saw

Sassy saw Shar build this business. She was there for the first posts, the first products, the first hope that maybe this thing she was making could help someone the way she had been helped.

She saw the holiday tip book go up — that first small brave offering to the world. She saw Shar show up on the hard days, the Body Days, the days when the bubble wrap came back.

She saw all of it. She bore witness. And she never stopped believing in Shar, not even for a moment — because that is what dogs do, and Sassy did it better than most.

For Sassy

Shih Tzu Mix · Shar's Ride-or-Die · The Original Sassy Sister

You were small enough to carry

and large enough to fill

every room you walked through

and every day I almost didn't.

You didn't ask me to be better.

You didn't wait for me to be okay.

You just came and sat down

and stayed

the way only the best ones do.

I named a whole world after you.

Not because you were perfect —

because you were present.

Every single time.

You were there when the hole was deepest.

You were there when I couldn't explain it.

You were there when the bubble wrap

was so thick I could barely breathe through it.

And you stayed.

Warm and steady and sure.

I built this for the women who need

what you gave me:

someone who doesn't flinch.

Someone who stays.

Someone who looks at you in the dark

and says — without saying anything —

you are worth sitting with.

You saw me build it.

You saw the first page,

the first word,

the first brave and terrifying

decision to tell the truth

out loud.

You left before you could see

what it becomes.

But I think you already knew.

I think you knew

the whole time.

I held you at the end

and loved you every second of it.

And I will hold you

in every word I write

for every woman I reach

for as long as this lasts.

Which is going to be

a very long time.

Because of you.

Rest easy, baby girl.

The pack is watching over me.

And I am watching over them.

And somewhere in all of it

you are still here.

You are still the reason.

You will always be the reason.

💜

The Sassy Standard

Named for the original. The measure of unconditional, ride-or-die love.

The standard Shar holds herself to in business and in life.



Sassy always knew.

This document lives in every Sassy Girlfriends product, platform, and community.

She is never an afterthought. She is always the foundation.

Sassy Girlfriends — Est. in her honor. Run in her spirit.