Remembering Chester

A year ago today we had to say goodbye to our little dog Chester. I know, it's sad, and I'm sorry. Dogs don't get to live as long as we do and it's just not fair. He was a great little guy and we miss him a lot.

I normally don't write much about my personal life, but I wanted to share this because Chester lived for such a surprisingly long time and he was such a big part of my family. I also wanted to highlight a couple of the amazing organizations that brought Chester to my family.

We adopted Chester in 2009 from Toronto Animal Services when they had a location at Exhibition Place, but he had an interesting history before that. He was originally from a high-kill shelter in Ohio and via Open Arms Pound Rescue, he was brought to Toronto to be put up for adoption, which was how we found him.

There were a lot of unknowns about Chester's origin. He knew he was originally a stray living on the street, but we don't really know how he got there or anything else before that. When he was at the Ohio shelter, they named him "Ike". As for his breed, the best guess was that he was a kind of mix between a Jack Russell and an Australian Shepard – people would frequently ask why breed he was all the time during our walks. His unofficial birthday was April 26, since that was the day we adopted him. At the time in 2009, the shelter figured he was maybe around two, but it really seemed like he was younger than that we assume he was maybe closer to being a year old. Recently my partner found a picture of Chester from the Ohio shelter (first picutre below) and it was dated January 2006, which means he was maybe 19(!?) when he died. Smaller bread dogs have an average life span of about 10-15 years so the fact that he lived so long is kind of remarkable. Up until maybe 2024, he really didn't seem "old" and it really felt like he was going to live forever.

He had a pretty amazing life considering how it started and we were very lucky to have him join our family. Here's a link to donate to Toronto Animal Services, which is a fantastic organization and I'm below are a bunch of photos of Chester over the years.