It’s no secret that my family are huge animal lovers. My husband Paul and I have always had either a cat or a dog as part of our family. In fact more often than not the animal members of the family were either equal in number to their human counterparts or outnumbered us altogether. Currently we have Luna our Blue Heeler, LZ (Little Zeus) the Chihuahua and Olivery our gray tabby cat the most affectionate of our animal family. Yes Oliver the cat is the most affectionate of them all, it’s quite amazing actually how affectionate he is.
There are of course like people the animal family members who always hold a special place in your heart. We have loved them all both past and present but for me there is one who I admit was always my favorite. Juno, one of two of our first dogs who was a boxer/ridgeback mix was an amazing dog. Her gentle and sweet nature for a dog that was over 90lbs was amazing. You could not help but love her with her soulful eyes and sweet disposition.
Here is one of my favorite pictures of Juno
I remember quite vividly the day we met Juno. We were not even looking for another dog as only 6 months before my then fiance now husband and I had adopted our first dog Zeus a German Shepherd/Rottweiler cross. He was a beautiful boy too who as our first dog together will always hold a special place in our hearts as well. Our good friends had decided that they would like to adopt their first dog together. One night the guys went out to go watch a hockey game while my friend Tammie and I stayed at our place to visit. We got to talking about how they wanted a dog and as it happened we had a large pet food store near us that also had Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) adoption center in it. I suggested to Tammie we go to the store and see what dogs they had for adoption.
Well let me tell you the minute we walked into that store and over to the adoption center we were hooked. Both of us were immediately drawn to this pair (yes 2) of puppies with the most adorable faces and big brown eyes you had ever seen. We were both hooked but I wasn’t there to adopt however that was quickly going to change. We were so distraught to learn that the adoption center itself was not open and that we would have to come back the next morning if we wanted to adopt these 2 puppies which we had learned were Boxer/Ridgeback crosses.
Here’s a picture of Juno and her sister Jewel (whom our friends adopted)
Sadly we had to go back to my place without the puppies of course. I anxiously waited for the guys to get back because I still had to convince Paul that were now going to be adopting another dog. Paul was skeptical about getting another dog especially one that would grow to be another large dog like our German Shepherd Paul. However, I convinced him wait until morning to meet the “girls” as Tammie and I kept referring to the pups as. I knew that once he saw those beautiful faces he would not be able to leave one of them behind.
We and our friends were there the next morning when the adoption center opened, actually just before it opened as we were so anxious and worried that someone else would adopt one or both of our girls. Our friends got to choose first as really it was supposed to be about them adopting a dog. It was not an easy choice as they were both beautiful pups but they chose and when we picked up our puppy we knew she was the girl for us. We got licks/kisses on the face and she was ours. We each took our new family members to our respective houses where we got to know each other a bit before trying to choose names for them. The next morning we called our friends and they told her they’d named their girl Jewel and we said ours was no Juno. We laughed at that a bit at how we chose names both with a “J” as if we had done that on purpose.
Here’s a picture of one of the times the animal family members equaled the humans, 3 dogs, 3 people 🙂
Juno, LZ, Luna and our daughter Sian
We were lucky we got over 10 years with our Juno, our friends only had about 8 with Jewel but we treasured them and always enjoyed how they knew they were sisters every time we had a “family” gathering which was often. They each brought us much joy and comfort when we needed it as they had that natural instinct and they are both missed to this day. We all treasure our time with our special canine family members.
What’s your favorite memory of a feline or canine family member?
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