Chloe Golden Retriever. A Maine Photographer

This blog post has been planned for over two years, but today is the day I write it.
This blog post is all about Chloe, our beautiful golden retriever, and how she and her destiny became such a big part of our family.
Timing.  It was all about the timing.

Chloe was born on December 6, 2009.
Her litter name is "Third times a charm"
because her Mom Macy was bred three times before she got pregnant.
Because her Mom was such a great dog, the breeder chose "Third times a charm" to continue her moms legacy, and chose her to be one of her guardian dogs to breed in the future.

December 6, 2009
My "big" sister Carmen died.
Carmen had been sick for a number of years, but I certainly had not prepared myself for her death.
Carmen was my only sister.  We grew up together.  How could she be gone?

December 30, 2009
My dog Tasha died.
Tasha was the only dog I ever owned.  We chose Tasha when Joshua was just a year old.  Although I told my husband Tasha was his dog, she very much became my dog.  I worked part time, and spent a great deal of time with Tasha and the boys.  We all grew up together :)

This was a very sad January and my heart was truly broken.  My husband started poking around the internet looking for a Golden Retriever.  I wasn't ready and asked him if he would just put us on a waiting list to get a rescue golden.  Just about everyday or every other day I would catch him poking around on the internet...and I would just say..."I'm not ready"
I wasn't ready in more than one way.  My heart was truly broken, but my wallet was hurting too.  We had spent a fair share of money on medical bills for Tasha, and purchasing a purebred was not really an option.  But my husband kept searching.  His heart was broken too...
and then one day he said to me "what if I told you I found a new litter of golden retrievers and they were born on the day Carmen died?"
To this day I'm sure my mouth was hanging open, and I said "I would tell you that you better get me one of those puppies"

The rest is kind of history for us.  My husband contacted the breeder, Rushell at Snowy Paw Golden Retrievers to see what we could do to get one of those puppies.  We shared our baggage and how we needed time to raise some funds and she asked us if we would meet with her to discuss some options.  We couldn't wait!  We met with her and she explained her guardian program.  Rushell has since made changes to the program, but the readers digest version of it is we could have a guardian puppy to keep in exchange for breeding privileges.  And once said breeding took place our guardian dog would go live with the breeder during the birth of the puppies and for eight weeks thereafter.

This brings us to today, and why I have waited a few years to write this post.  Chloe, at the age of four, has just had her first litter...and is currently living with the breeder.  Our house is so quiet and we miss her dearly, but we are so proud of our happy Mama dog!
...and a few fun facts about Chloe
We named her Chloe after my sister, Carmen Lowe.
We started adding the word "butt" to her name...right from the beginning because she packed a powerful stench to her poops...it started as Stinkybutt, then came Snowybutt, but mostly it's just Chloebutt.  
Chloe pretty much lived up to her mom's reputation on the difficulty of getting pregnant and was able to have this litter after being artificially inseminated this past January.
We hope to breed her again at the end of 2014 to fulfill our contract, and very much hope to be able to raise one of her future pups.