My Dad, Frosty and Kito

Today is my Dad's B-day. He was a dog lover and a WONDERFUL father. He passed away 4 years ago last October and not a day goes by that I do not think of him. I miss him very much. Anyway, how does my dad relate to dogs - specifically Boxers? As a child, we always had a dog. One time my dad brought home a toy poodle form his work, and we had her for a long time, her name was Sheila and she bit everyone in the house, multiple times. Anyway, pictured above is Frosty, Sadie and Kito. Frosty is about 11 yrs old in the picture. We only had Sadie 3 months at that point. Kito was my brother's Boxer (7 yrs in the picture). Kito was given up by a girl who no longer could care for him, a daughter of a friend of my Uncle's.

Here is the story about how we got Frosty and how she picked her own name. A brother of my mom's best friend was breeding Boxers (ick!) and his female Tasha gave birth to 3 boxers, a fawn and 2 white females. One of the white females died right away. The fawn was given to the stud owner and the other white one was left and available for purchase. My brother and I begged and begged to get her. So, finally they gave in and we got to bring her home. We had no idea what to name her. She was so cute and white! She looked like a little bunny. She was so small compared to our other dog, at the time, Maggie. Maggie was a 130 lb bullmastiff. Anyway, we had the white puppy at home and we were wondering what to name her. So, my dad had the idea that we all pick a name, write it on a little piece of paper and have the puppy pick her own name out. Well, I picked nieve, which means snow in spanish. My brother picked spider, my mom picked Frosty and my dad picked Samantha. So we placed all the pieces of paper on the floor and we let her go and she ran, picked up a piece of paper and ran. We caught her and then took the name out of her mouth. It was FROSTY! :) She was definitely a Frosty and she loved her name.

They say that death comes in 3's. For my family it did. My Dad died in October 2003. Frosty died of heart failure at the ripe old age of 11 in Feb 2004. Then 1 week later, Kito, my brother's Boxer, died of heart failure at the too young age of 7. We were all very heartbroken at all the death. It was a very hard time for all of us. But, I have pictures and memories of all the dogs that I have love in my life and I thank my dad for teaching me to be kind to dogs and always having them around while I was growing up.