[frazkced]

We were left heartbroken a few days ago, when Jesse our eleven year old reverse brindle lost her battle with an aggressive GI tract cancer. Though we are sad the she is not with us anymore, we were happy for her that she was in such good health for her entire life up until the last few weeks. Other than slowing down a little she remained playful and fun. She had such a wonderful personality and was extremely intelligent and was a faithful friend and big sister to Melody(a maine coon cat). Our initial reaction, other than a lot of tears, was that we could never get another dog. However looking around the house and seeing her bed and toys we realized how much of our lives revolved her. Being greeted at the door after a tough day, evening trips outside followed up by the nightly treat(at the exact same time each night by Jesse's time clock), Jesse and Mel races downstairs to breakfast, etc... Right now even the cat is sad, searching the house for her friend. We are thinking that maybe someday we will want to fill the void with another boxer, though we know she will be a new family member and not a replacement for Jesse. Here is the question that we could use some advice on, because we were blessed with Jesse, she had qualities that seemed more human than doglike and she had such good health, would it make sense to try and find the original breeder and try and locate a puppy from the same bloodline or is that crazy since it's been eleven years? Would it even make sense? We have friends that have lost two different boxers to cancer before they were both eight years old within our Jesse's lifetime and have recently adopted their third after a 18 month period of thinking they did not want to go through another loss. Since we were so lucky with Jesse, we are thinking it might be a good place to start. If so, any suggestions on how we could get started searching for a breeder that may have continued the bloodline?