The first one I ever met of your kind was a beautiful ruby girl puppy.  Because of her heart murmur, she’d been turned over to the veterinarian I was volunteering with.  Her heart murmur indicated significant disease and, given the dog’s young age, the owner didn’t want to develop a relationship that would end quickly in heart ache.  Years went by without seeing any more of your breed.  Then I was a fourth year veterinary school student.  Suddenly, your breed–the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel–was back in my life.  Mostly I’d see Cavaliers like you on cardiology service where we’d perform echos (ultrasounds of the heart) or EKGs on your sweet breed.  Those big brown eyes would look up at me and the tail would wag on every single one of those dogs.  They were always so gentle and the wagging tail and kind eyes were filled with gratitude.  “Thank you for helping me,” they seemed to say.  Some dogs would grow impatient with the procedures, the handling, but not Cavaliers.  With some reassuring words or a gentle pat on the head,  the Cavaliers would be content to lie in your arms for anything that needed to be done.  Cavaliers were not only kind, they were beautiful.  Their big brown eyes, long silky coats, happy tails, and small size made everyone fuss over them. Though my husband and I already had 2 labradors in our lives, after cardiology rotation was over, I told him that someday we would have a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.  For whatever reason, my husband could never remember the full name of the breed.  Compared to ‘lab’, the ‘Cavalier King Charles Spaniel’ was a mouthful.  He truncated it to ‘Lord Chesterfield’.  No, that doesn’t really naturally flow as a way to truncate the full name of the Cavalier, but it made me laugh.  From then on, we joked that we would some day have a ‘Lord Chesterfield’ of our own.

Vet school graduation took us to my first assignment overseas in Germany.  While living and practicing there, Cavaliers were rare.  Even so, whenever one would cross my path, I’d return home to tell my husband that I’d bumped into a ‘Lord Chesterfield’.  My love for the breed never faded and I still hoped to have one of our own someday.  As a new veterinarian, and then a new mom, the idea of adding another dog to our lives seemed absolutely impossible.  I was busy first learning to be an Army Veterinarian which included the oh-so-enticing (not!) responsibility of conducting ‘food sanitation audits’ to sites throughout Northern Europe.  Veterinary school did not prepare me for the food sanitation/food safety aspect of my new responsibilities as an Army Veterinarian.  A lot of time was invested in me by my unit’s food experts who were patient in showing me the expectations for this part of my new profession. I was also busy learning to speak enough German to ask directions and then follow said directions to find my way to the food establishments, procure a hotel room, and order food in restaurants.  All of this was in addition to adapting to the transition from veterinary school (someone there to back you up, offer a nod of approval, and help make sure you kept your patient’s alive) to life on my own as a new graduate (no one to back me up, no nods of approvals, learning that animals die in spite of our best care).  I also became a mom for the first time with only 18 months in the Army and just over a year in Germany.  To say things were hectic was a major understatement.  The 2 wonderful dogs that we had at the time, our labs Roly and Wilbur, were lucky enough to come to work with me when I was in the clinics and seemed to really love their time with our new baby, Anna.  One of my favorite memories from that time was wearing Anna in one of those front-facing baby carriers (a baby Bjorn at the time) while I kicked a soccer ball for Wilbur to retrieve.  Anna giggled SO LOUD with each kick to Wilbur.  While she was just a few months old and barely had a belly large enough to produce a deep, hearty chuckle, she somehow managed to make it so.  Between Wilbur’s love of retrieving and Anna’s giggle, I could go on playing that game for what seemed like hours every day after work.  Life was busy with taking in so many new things all at once, but it was also really wonderful and fun.

Years went by and we moved back to the US and added 2 more baby girls to our family.  We also lost our dearest dog, Roly, to an aggressive nasal tumor.  Having just one dog felt so lonely and sad. For sure our Wilbur was lonely and sad, too.  We adopted a senior yellow lab named Lexie who stayed with us a few years.  Wilbur didn’t seem to care too much for Lexie, perhaps due to Lexie’s obsession with sprinting out the front door and knocking children over to steal their food.  Or maybe that we me who never bonded with Lexie for those exact same reasons.  You couldn’t bend over with her in the room, not to tie your shoes, not to pick up a wayward Lego, as she would bolt full speed at your back, lock her front paws onto your waist, and start humping away.  Definitely not an expected behavior from a SENIOR, ARTHRITIC SPAYED, FEMALE dog!  As time went by, Lexie slowed down on her escaping our home and on the humping.  Age caught up with Lexie and she passed away at the age of 12 after spending 2 years with us.  For many, having one labrador is plenty enough dog for a family with 3 young children.  For us though, we’d had 2 dogs in our lives for so long that it didn’t feel right to have only one.  Plus, to know Wilbur was to wonder how he could be a lab and yet seem to want solitude over time with his people.  Both Roly and Lexie would follow us from room to room. Wilbur was special–he left a room when you entered it.  He didn’t care to snuggle and he always seemed worried.  If we hadn’t had him with us since he was only 8 weeks old, we’d wonder if he’d been abused along the way.  But nope, he’d been with us continuously and to be honest, had been a little strange right from the moment we decided he was ours.  He definitely seemed to be less nervous with another dog in the house.  A second dog was absolutely necessary to complete our family.  We decided that another large breed dog was not a wise choice given that all 3 of our daughters were under the age of 10, the youngest being barely 2.  We also had a home with an incredible number of steps, both in total number of staircases (4) and total number of steps (a lot!).  Wilbur was gentle and, when he was in the same room with us, provided a wide berth around the kids.  We didn’t worry about him knocking them down the stairs should someone leave a kiddie gate open.  Another lab puppy would grow so quickly and we knew them to be so energetic that we for sure thought they’d be a fall hazard to our girls.  For a bit of time we pursued rescuing a small breed puppy, but it didn’t work out and that’s a story for another day.  A few months after Lexie passed away and the pursuit of another rescue was a dead end, my husband had a eureka moment.  “A Lord Chesterfield!  That’s the dog for us now, a Lord Chesterfield”.  More than 10 years had gone by between those days on cardiology and this opening in our canine family.  A Lord Chesterfield would be absolutely perfect–they were small, friendly, happy dogs.  Turns out, they were also quite hard to find!

After several months of searching for breeders and available pups, we met our match.  To honor his place as the ‘Lord Chesterfield’ we’d waited so long for, his name had to become “Lord Chesterfield.”  We called him Chester for short, and adored every square inch of his tiny, beautiful, tricolor Cavalier King Charles self.  Chester was worth the wait.  He was absolutely adorable, gentle with our girls, and always wagging his tail.  Wilbur seemed to appreciate Chester’s small size and outgoing nature, too, and became good friends with him, even hanging out more with our family thanks to Chester.  Chester, like any good dog, brought immense joy to our family.  Had a hard day at school, at work, or at home?  There wasn’t much that some time with Chester couldn’t fix.  His happy was contagious.  The only thing we didn’t enjoy about him was his snoring.  Chester could snore so loudly and deeply that his snore could be heard and felt no matter where he fell asleep in the house.  Even with his awful snoring, adding Chester to our lives was the start of many happy years that were to come.   Until Chester, we’d been a lab family.  We officially transitioned to a lab and cavalier family and couldn’t have found a better match for our dog-loving home.

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