Chester (left) and Noble bonding

Chester on the sofa, making himself at home

My son couldn't help but tuck him in.  He looks comfy!

We officially got Chester, whom you have listed as Chester Ray (his original name from the Rescue Agency was Ray, but it seems a lot of blind dogs get named for the late Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, great musicians in their own right, and who happened to be blind as well, but my family and I didn't care for the name and the direct association with blindness,) on Sunday July 1st. My wife and I drove to Mountain Lakes, NJ (a sort of half-way point that we had been to previously,) and met Ewa, Chester's foster mother there. Ewa had driven up with her charge from Virginia. Chester's photo didn't do him justice particularly where his personality is concerned!

He is a handsome blanket back Beagle with a very sweet disposition. We already had experience with a blind beagle as our 10 year lemon and white beagle, Noble, went suddenly blind from SARDs in 2006. When I heard of Chester's plight, abandoned possibly due to blindness and in a Kill Shelter 24 hours away from certain death, I knew in my heart what I had to do without hesitation, particularly after I saw his photo.

In the 9 months that we have had Chester join our family of five, he has been a real treasure for us. At first he and Noble had some difficulty establishing a "pecking order," but after a couple of weeks, Noble being the much older dog handled that very swiftly, and Chester whom we affectionately call "Chess," soon after began sticking close to Noble, licking his paws and face, and just seems to adore Noble. The two now get along very well. Chester is a very sweet dog and we are so glad to have him as part of our family. In fact, he wasn't completely blind when we got him and so he got a chance to "map" our home and our neighborhood for about 3 months before, unfortunately progressive retinal atrophy (which is incurable, but less devastating than the SARDs that Noble contracted,) set in and made him permanently blind. Chess of course has his bad habits and one of those is "taking over a sofa" and not letting any of us move him off! We have to share it with him! We gladly do that because he is just so adorable.