I haven’t spoken about this on the blog yet, but on March 29th we said goodbye to our sweetest boy, Webster. Our 12.5 year old chocolate lab who had been by our side our entire adult lives. You can see a little tribute I made for him here. He was the best dog in the entire world and Dave and I still talk about him and miss him every day. To say we feel his void is an understatement.

But out of this sadness, came Bear! He is an 11-week-old chocolate lab puppy and he is Webster’s great-nephew. We had no intentions of getting a puppy so soon but here we are!

When Webster passed away, we reached out to the same breeder we got him – Hillview Kennels in Wisconsin (puppies are picked up outside of Chicago). We knew we wanted a puppy in Webster’s bloodline with the plan to pick one from a litter this fall. They replied that a litter of chocolates would be available in early April from a dog whose grandfather was Webster’s dad. So we said, ok!

The day after we returned from the Cayman Islands (recap of our trip coming this week!), Dave flew to Chicago and back to pick up Bear. We surprised the kids with Bear’s arrival and we are slowly settling into puppyhood! Which is a very far departure from a very well-trained 12-year-old lab.

Bear is so sweet and also very rambunctious, chews on everything, is obsessed with our kids, and is welcoming all of the love from our neighborhood. We basically have two toddlers causing equal amounts of havoc in our house. Knock on wood but he is already doing very well with potty training and letting us know when he wants to go outside, but of course, we still have a few accidents here and there. It brings us so much joy to have a little piece of Webster still with us. We can’t wait to have Bear with us on all of our little family adventures.