match.dog
"HOW I MET MY TRUE LOVE" love stories about real dogs + their humans By Nicole Ten Eyck & Ken Sheehan — Hampton, NH
Juniper
“Love is like a trout stream. Try to capture a trout stream with a dam and you get a lake. Try to catch it in a bucket and you get a bucket of water. Try to stick it under a microscope and you get a close-up look at withering amorphous microcooties. A trout stream is only a trout stream when it’s flowing between its own two banks, at its own pace, in its own sweet way.” - The River Why, David James Duncan The beauty of water in the landscape has always been central to our family’s identity. As seemingly unpredictable as a stream’s meander, our path has found us happily back on the New Hampshire Seacoast, and this time we have a black and white furry buddy to take to the beach. Our wanderlust has allowed us to live in some pretty amazing places, like Flagstaff, AZ. We began our search for a rescue dog six years ago while Ken was doing research in the Grand Canyon (before we moved back to NH). Several months into our search the local Humane Society likely knew us by sight. We weren’t looking for a puppy, but rather an older dog, and we knew we wanted a mixed breed. We’d almost given up our search and hadn’t visited the shelter for months when on a whim we put our hopeful hearts in our respective pockets and headed out the door.
Down a noisy blue shelter corridor we saw a nameless red mud-covered Border collie mix, leaning calmly against the wall of her pen, who had been picked up on the Navajo reservation the day before. This one-year-old pup started licking Ken’s hand through the chain link fence, an act which may seem simple, but it was delicate and honest amidst the surrounding mayhem. When we opened her pen, Ken sat down and she lay across his legs and kept on licking. We stayed until close and got in our car and drove away — and our hearts ached. The thought of leaving her there was too much, and we decided we would go back and adopt her in the morning. Ken had to work, so I camped out at the entrance to the Humane Society until it opened. I was full of butterflies and won’t ever forget when the attendant gave me the “I’ve been adopted” sign to place on her kennel. Not long after, our little nameless dog made her way to our car, the beautiful Southwest red clay still covering her body. She was ours- or rather, we were hers! She was just skin and bone, shy and sweet.
Juniper has educated us since day one. Still nameless at the time, our furry forager wouldn’t come when called on one of her first walks with us (and she’d been our shadow until then). We discovered her under a huge Juniper tree, following her own path, and eating a few of the plump and fragrant berries. She was a survivor after a year alone in the wilderness and it turns out the berries are good for a variety of ailments in dogs. The adventure earned Juniper her name and answered our question – “are juniper berries even good for dogs?” Our love grows every day for Juniper as we experience life with her. The first day June smelled the ocean, it was a welcome home moment. Whether it’s dulse and rockweed hiding a fish on the beach, the smells each tide brings are too good to pass up, as is rolling on her back and wriggling belly up in the sand. Our lives are forever changed. We find ourselves smiling at the end of the day, grateful to see her tail wagging in her sleep, getting ready to wake us up with a gentle nudge of her nose, ready for another adventure.
8 seacoastbarkmagazine.com
