Bear

 

    In 2016 we got a call that my brother was going to be fostering a puppy. We met him and thought he looked like a little bear. Which resulted in a name change from Bing to Bear. Although Bear was only meant to be in our lives for a few weeks, we ended up officially adopting him. Well, it was my sister and her then Finance who adopted them. Yet they had not graduated College yet, meaning that Bear lived with only my parents and me. I was the one who trained Bear, He was a Dutch Shepard, meaning he was incredibly easy to train. I taught him all your basics but my favorite thing was how I taught him to use bells. Every time I took him out I would direct him to bells we had bought and I made him hit them before we left. This taught him to ring these bells anytime he had to use the bathroom. It was always the cutest thing seeing him hit his bells. Even if he would sometimes ring them just because he was bored. 

    Bear was the weirdest dog I had ever come in contact with. We used to call him " Chicken dog " because of how scared of everything he was. If you were meeting Bear for the first time he would walk up to you, tail wagging, but the second you went to pet him he'd run away. He was found alone in Gary at a young age which is what we think made him like this. But he would never bite you, he would just run away and maybe bark. Bear lived like this so almost 2 years until late 2018 when we realized something was wrong. He wasn't eating as much and was beginning to gain fluid. When we took him to the vet they told us ( if I'm remembering right) he was born with a very small liver and no gallbladder. These things by themselves are something a dog could live with, but when put together they become very hard to live with. Meaning we put Bear on medication and hoped he could be a miracle puppy. The more we learned about what might happen the worst the situation got. They told us the longer he lived with the more prone to seizures he'd become. Even though we would do anything to keep Bear with us, the last thing we wanted was for him to suffer. 

    With Bear only getting worst we could see him struggling to do most things. And it made it very easy to tell he was struggling since he was only 2 years old. We knew he didn't have much time yet we didn't know how long.  But the day did come New Years' Eve 2018. It was unfair what happened to my dog, but I know we gave him the best 2 years of his life.