What did he say? "Life is like a box of chocolates" ?

I have decided to tell you  a story, a story about the box of chocolates that was given to our family recently.  It all began...well when did it begin? Did it begin back in the spring of 2001 when our Corgi /border collie who never left the yard for some reason decided to go visit the neighbors and was killed by a car?  I think it did , because two days later we went to the dog pound in search of a dog to fill the hole in our hearts that "Murry" left by his heartbreaking passing.
     Of course their were a couple dogs before Murry too , there was Sugarbear my very first dog that I got on Mothersday.  We were naive though and had bought her at a pet store, a purebred cocker spaniel who after 5 years had developed so many problems one of which was blindness that we had to put her down after she lost control of her hind end.  Then there was Buster, oh I loved that dog, a purebred we thought that by buying him from a local breeder would save us the heart ache of loosing a dog after 5 years...but alas Buster too was a victim of the over breeding of the Cocker Spaniel Breed. He developed an enlarged liver I remember the vet telling me he couldn't believe he was alive after examining him, but I think the love we had between us kept him going, one day he just fell asleep and never woke up. I remember burying him with the help of my two children with his carebear and his favorite blanket.  When you loose a pet its like loosing a member of your family.  I had nightmares for months about it was probably elevated because I had lost my Dad about the same time.
  So back to the dog pound, my Husband, my daughter and I packed into my little Ford Ranger truck and went to find us a new dog. We looked at all the faces and kept going back to one.  The woman there said "This boy has been with us for 6 months, we don't normally keep dogs that long but he is the best dog, people just don't want him because he is so big" Big? wait...Big? The dog was HUGE. Of course my daughter asked if we could take him out for a walk, we didn't walk him, he walked US, pulling us all over their back field like nobodies business.  He did however know how to sit, lay down and shook paws. Oh and play fetch I think thats the thing that got us, along with those big Brown eyes.

We brought him home , they even let us take him home that day because they knew us which was handy. Although we thought it was weird when they asked where are you going to put him and we answered in the house....they both looked shocked and said "your going to keep him in your house". We didn't understand that until we got him IN the house and he sat next to us at the kitchen table and rested his head on it...or when later that evening he took 3 steaks off the kitchen counter and devoured them in a matter of seconds. hmmmm Is THAT why they had named him Bandit?  During the course of his life Bandit, ate more steaks, loaves of banana bread, chocolate, fudge, butter , an ant trap, oh my gosh if he could get it, he'd eat it. But being as big as he was I guess he had a stomach of iron, and a heart to go along with it. There wasn't a soul that met him that didn't fall in love with him, he never realized how big he was ever. If you pat him while you were sitting in a chair somehow he would always end up in your lap. His tail ever wagging would clear shelves off in seconds. He loved to play tug of war while giving his toughest growls that worried us a first but soon we found he was just Playing the part.
 He traveled with us to Canada with his new brother McKenzie a beautiful German Shepherd

we had flown back from Alberta with us, my father in laws dog whom after his passing had no place to go so my husbands sister and I devised a plan to get him home to Vermont and once hearing the plan the airlines even gave us a bereavement rate for the dog. McKenzie and Bandit loved it at our lakeshore home where behind a big fenced in yard they could sit on the deck and watch the world go by, bandit could safely chase the neighbor that lived behind us that he knew made his Mom a little nervous. But yet Dave his best buddy who lived next door he would whine and whine until Dave came over to give him a scratch and finally he figured out a way to wiggle his big 120 lb body under the fence so he could go scatch on Daves front door and get invited in for doggie treats and a nap on Daves bed.

     Some time during our stay in Canada while we were all relaxing in the gazebo by the lakeshore, a white ball of fluff rolled? by. The dogs tore off to see what it was and I not soon after. I thought a rabbit? What was that?  I soon find this little white dog sitting in the corner in the fenced in yard ( must of crawled through Bandits hole) I knew that a woman a few doors down bred dogs so figured it must be hers.  If my husband knew what was going to happen then he would of brought the dog back to the lady ( Anne) himself. But it was I who carried the little dog back innocently knocking on the door to ask if it was her dog.  "oh yes that is my dog, come in and see my PUPPIES!" oh no....anyone who loves animals, puppies in general Never , I say NEVER look at a litter of shitzu puppies unless you plan on falling in love.....it wasn't long after that  when I walked down to her house and brought "Chester" home.  A little ball of fur that was the size of Bandits head.....one day I put all 3 of them in the yard and the two big dogs were wrestling with him. I thought for sure they were going to kill that little puppy so I pulled him out of the mess and brought him into the front yard. I put him down and what did he do? He ran as fast as he could go wrestle with those big dogs again. So it started I guess just as Bandit never knew how big he was, Chester still doesn't know he is a little dog.

A few years  later we bought a home in Vermont and before we moved out there my daughter and her fiance' moved in to occupy it until we could sell our Canada home.  My daughter requested that Bandit come live with her and keep her company while making her feel safe and secure with that big ol bark he had.  So thats what he did.  He loved running through the woods with his nose up in the air smelling all the new and exciting smells in the woods.  He soon met the neighbors and loved to go down to visit and get treats from Penny and go play with his buddy "Otis" another big dog close by.
    Before we could make the move to Vermont our beautiful dog Mckenzie developed a huge tumor in his gut , little did we know but the Vet said it had to have been growing their a long time but he being the kind of dog he was, just kept on doing his job looking after me and never complained until he got so bad he couldn't hide it any longer.  It broke our hearts but he had to put him down.  It hurt so bad that he was never going to get to run in the woods of Vermont but we have him here with us in the Cedar box that rests on the shelf behind me.
     My Husband is a Ship Captain so there are times when he goes and is gone for up to 2 months at a time, it was time for him to go to work and here I was alone on the lake with .... Chester...hmmm this wasn't reassuring at all, not to insult you Chester but that yap yap yap wasn't going to deter anyone from coming into our house or yard!
     My husband suggested a new dog and we went in search of a German Shepherd dog at a local breeders since they had puppies for sale. We never got to even SEE the puppies, they had a year old dog there that they couldn't seem to place, he was as big as a bear with a dark black face and floppy ears, I guess the people who came to see him wouldn't take him because he would show no aggressive behavior at all just a big MUSH....I can't say I fell in love with him at first sight, he was a gangly thing and nervous because he didn't know us.  I had just lost McKenzie and I wasn't sure that this guy was going to fill the void, but he was beautiful and I wouldn't have to do the "puppy thing" well he had lived in his kennel all his life so yes he did need to be house trained.   But before we could do that we had to get him in the car, afraid of the car, afraid of getting out of the car, afraid of going through the gate, afraid of going through the front door, afraid of going up the stairs, afraid of going down the stairs...really???
     But yes this was our new dog.  He thought Chester was a live chew toy and Chester soon discovered he could avoid that by sitting in the middle of the kitchen table.   Eventually Yukon realized that the chew toy would bite him if he played too hard so they learned to play together this 12lb Shitzu and this 100 lb German Shepherd...what a sight!

So we moved to Vermont and Bandit got to meet his new brother. It was funny how Bandit would head off on one of his hikes and Yukon would tag along behind ,me imagining him saying " where are you going? can I come? Please can I come?" Bandit tolerated his excess energy!   Sometime during the next year, that German Shepherd snuck into my heart deep , now Bandit loved his walks but when we walked in the woods he would abandon me for whatever smell caught his nose. I could call him over and over but until he was ready he would look at me and then turn his head back and go on his way.  Yukon on the other hand was never far from my side and if by chance Bandit did let him go on a hike with him if I called "Yukon" he would come running with leaps and bounds. Oh I love to watch him run, to hear him is like hearing a horse galloping on a soft field. Yukon became my protector, fretting only if I was out of his sight.  I almost thought I was going to loose him last summer when I awoke to him whimpering and I could tell it was serious, frightened by his symptoms that by some Grace of God I had read about just weeks before. I called our Vets at 1AM to only have him say "Bring him in first thing in the morning" and when I said "Will he make it till morning" he replied "I don't know but you should of thought of that earlier in the day"....and no we don't go there anymore.  We called another Vet who told us to get the dog in the car and bring him immediately 45 minutes away. And yes after an x'ray told us he did indeed have a twisted gut, and would die if he didn't have surgery, so our choice was put him down or spend $3000.00 on surgery.  I left the room, I couldn't make the decision, my husband came out and I knew that we were going to be sitting in the waiting room praying for Yukon to survive the surgery..which he did and came back fast. I love our new Vet. :) LUVS in Morrisville.
  2 summers ago I told my husband that after weed whacking the backfield for the 5th time that summer that I was going to get a couple goats to help keep it cleared off. After convincing him that I was serious My daughter, son and Law and I went to a farm and brought home 5 goats, 3 for me and 2 for them.  I was supposed to bring home 2 but I couldn't make up my mind they were so cute.

We named them Tornado, Twister and Cyclone since my husband and I are kind of weather nerds. Soon the three little goats became five little goats adding Hurricane and Tsunami.  Anyone who has never had experience with these little Nigerian Dwarf goats has no idea that they are pretty much dogs. The love to get scratched and petted. They will follow you everywhere you go and if you sit down , they'll be in your lap just like our dog bandit.  We built them a nice fenced in yard attached to our fenced in back yard. And built them a nice little stall in the workshop.  In the summer they have electric fencing or sometimes I just let them run loose since they never really stray far from their safe little barn. If they hear a noise they aren't sure of , they'll come running with leaps and bounds and run to the safety of their barn.  There was one day that one of the little boys squeezed through the fence into the back yard I was unaware of until I saw Yukon and Bandit with the little thing. Luckily I stopped them and got Cyclone back in the barn where I treated him for shock and all was well. It was pretty frightening though and I went to work fixing every spot I could find in the fence that divided the dogs and goats. All was well and we got three more little goats Thunder, Lightening and Snowflake.  There was twice that two of these little guys found a place to squeeze through the fence before I covered everything that even had a one inch space in it and all was well no more goat sightings in the back yard. Yukon loved chasing them on his side of the fence though and it was worrying me more and more of what would happen if a Goat ever did jump in the fence when I wasn't home.
   Anders and I had to go to his company meetings in Ontario and we had asked our neighbor to watch our animals for us but a week before we were going to go my daughter and son in law thought they would come stay at the house and have a sort of Holiday, getting a break from their home and getting a chance to relax here while her husband cut trees for firewood for the next season. Sounded like a wonderful idea , our pets would be looked after and the house too so we went off on our way.  It would be nice to get away from the Huge amounts of snow we had received this winter to the point of just being able to get out the back door .

Before we left actually long before we left we had been treating Bandit with 5 different medications for pain he had been in and he was doing wonderfully, at 12 years old his old bones were complaining but the medication was making him comfortable enough that he was able to go for those hikes that he hadn't been making lately.   

   But sometime during our trip Bandit took a turn for the worse and my daughter could only tell me "its not good Mom"  We both cried with each other on the phone ....my stomach turned ...I was so sorry that my daughter was feeling such pain and so worried about our big boy Bandit.  So my husband I returned home early.  It was on our way home that he and I decided that we needed to find a new home for Yukon too to protect our little goats and be responsible pet owners  just not any home but the home that he deserved were someone who would love him, just as I loved him who would take care of him for the rest of his life.  We had a 9 hour drive and all the while we both ached knowing that our dog Bandit needed to go to the vets and we were more than sure of how that outcome would be and also for the decision we had made about Yukon.  We took Bandit to the vets and the three of us sat with him as he took his last breath and he was no longer in pain.  And next week I will bring my beautiful dog Yukon to and old friend who has a farm , has horses and loves to go for walks in the woods like I do. I know she will fall in love with Yukon just as I did and she will give him the home he deserves where he can run and have fun and stretch those long legs of his.  

Chester has a big job starting Wednesday filling in a huge hole.

So thats the box of Chocolates that was handed to us, I am hoping the bottom layer might be tastier....