animal lover's profile
Meet The Nettleton’s & Their Little Pack By Nancy Dewar
Chris, Anne, Cosmo, Bertie & Violet
Anne and Chris of North Hampton are originally mid-Westerners from the Chicago area. I asked them how they met. “We met the good old-fashioned way. No internet. No apps. We met at a bar on Division Street, which was the single’s scene in Chicago” Chris said with a laugh. Both had recently graduated from college, and they’ve been together ever since… two grown children later with some very special dogs along the way. Chris grew up in a dog-loving family. “We always had Irish Setters. They are the most beautiful and the dumbest dogs on earth. All of them were given to us. Probably because they are crazy!” Anne grew up surrounded by Pugs. “We had Pugs until my sister brought home a mutt given to her for Christmas by her boyfriend. She named the dog Noel, and my father immediately said, ‘This dog is going back.’ And then we came home a few days later and caught him in the kitchen kissing her. I think that’s when my love for mutts started,” Anne said. After living in an apartment for a year in the city, Anne and Chris bought their first condo. “We really wanted our own place so we could get a dog,” Anne explained. The next weekend, Labor Day 1983, they went to a local rescue and
I first met Anne Nettleton a few years ago when she reached out to me and said, “We came across Seacoast Bark and would love to become a part of it.” We had met for lunch at Joe’s Meat Shoppe in North Hampton, and I loved Anne the minute I met her! I felt the same when I met her husband Chris, as these two are huge animal lovers… especially when it comes to black mutts! found their amazing Asta; a one-year-old Shepherd/Chow mix who turned out to be their heart-dog. They were blessed with him for 15 ½ years. “He was so smart and truly stole our heart all of the years we had him,” Chris said.
First Rescue Asta with Baby Ian
After living in various Chicago suburbs, Anne and Chris moved to Stratham in 1992 due to a job transfer. I asked Anne how she felt about her move to the Seacoast. “At first I was heartbroken, and then I fell madly in love with the area. We had no idea what New Hampshire was about nor that it even had a coastline!” Though only here for three years before eventually ending up in New Jersey, New Hampshire captured their hearts and they always looked forward to “coming home.”
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Anne and Chris’ second dog was Shelby, a Huskey mix. “She was beautiful, smart; and we had another dog that lived 15 ½ years. We lost her in 2013 while in New Jersey.” Shortly after losing Shelby, a darling black rescue named Violet joined their family. “We found Violet about a week after. I could hardly wait a week before getting a new dog. Not that I was trying to replace Shelby” Anne said. “I just needed another dog to love.”
Violet was an abused mixed breed from North Carolina they found online. “We got her when she was nine or ten months old, and she was a train wreck. She had been returned once, probably because of her fear. She still is a bit fearful and nervous but has settled in with us.” The Nettleton’s always did “one dog at time.” Well, that is until another black mutt came to their attention. Bertie, a rescue from Georgia, joined the family in December 2013. In describing him, Chris said, “Bertie is like Ronald Regan. Older than he looks but his hair is all black; no gray!” Anne and Chris (and Violet and Bertie) moved back to New Hampshire when Chris retired in 2016. The plan was to simply relax and en-
