Here it is – the official last Minion introduction! My poor fiance’ was forced to endure the Cat Test before I decided we could officially start dating. (After all, if they didn’t like him, he’d have to go) Those three and I came as a complete package. Juniper is unique because she entered the family after he and I were already dating and in the process of moving in together.
He’d had Greyhounds in the past, and I’d been a Greyhound fan for years. Why not? They’re basically cats in dog form. After years of cooing over them at Renaissance Faires (yes, I’m one of those people. Oh, don’t act surprised), and spending hours sitting with them in my Faire costumes, I knew I’d own one some day. Now that I had a house of my own with a yard (oh, yeah, and someone who already loved the breed), the time was right.
The adoption hunt was on!
Synchronicity was on our side. Florida’s now-infamous law had just passed, and the various rescues were seeing a higher than usual influx of dogs needing homes. My fiance’ wanted to use the same rescue he had before (he visited it on a regular basis), so we stopped by after Thanksgiving.
Fun Fact: The Greyhound chooses the family.
After several misses (on a short list since we needed a dog that was cat-friendly), they brought out a new arrival from Florida. She was on the small side, missing more than the usual amount of hair (Greyhounds have bald butts from rubbing in their crates), and shy as all get out. Her name was June, and the moment we called her name, she came right over. In fact, every time we called her name, she came. We took her for a short walk, and she stayed with us. You would have thought she’d been with us for years. It was fate.
That was when the rescue tipped us off that they were concerned she was hypothyroid. (The direct opposite of Firefly – her thyroid wasn’t producing enough) That explained her lower energy level and hair loss. That solution was easy enough: life-long supplementation. They were more than happy to place her with a family holding a veterinary background.
Oh, yeah – one more tiny detail.
Literally tiny: Florida dogs came with a resistant strain of hookworms. Treatment existed, but it usually took up to SIX MONTHS to clear them! I still wasn’t too daunted – I knew how to handle hookworms (er, NOT to handle them being the first step).
We set the date to pick her up (she still needed to be spayed and vaccinated). Then came the heavy conversation on the drive home: what to rename her. “June” was a terrible name. Neither of us liked the idea of standing outside and shouting for a 80-year-old grandmother. (No offense if your grandmother is named June)
There was a problem, though.
She was two-years-old. So we couldn’t completely change a name she was used to. That meant the new name needed to SOUND like her current name. After discarding the most obvious (Junebug, Juno), Juniper popped out. We’d be bringing her home just before Christmas, Juniper is an herb of protection (and while we didn’t expect that from her, we wanted it FOR her) – it was meant to be.
Juniper came home, and two out of three of her new siblings were NOT impressed. Firefly didn’t mind too much – until she barked at him, then he was having NONE of it. In fact, it took him MONTHS to forgive her. Tonks engaged in “scouting” missions, sneaking up under blankets and around furniture to spy on this new intruder. Squeak, oddly enough, accepted her right off the bat. He meeped a “hello,” butted her head, and decided she was family and belonged.
Of course, Tonks appropriated Juniper’s beds from the start. There is nothing funnier than watching a 70-pound dog avoid her bed because a tiny 7-pound kitten is parked in the middle of it. To this day, Juniper will surrender one of her beds if Tonks decides to sleep in it. The original animosity has dissipated, though, and all four of them get along. Tonks and Juniper will even play together, and they curl up in the same sunbeams.
It took Juniper’s personality months to surface. While she had toys available from the beginning, she didn’t start to play until about three months with us passed. Now she plays with her toys on her own. She still hasn’t figured out fetch, but she does get chase. She partakes in about four laps of “zoomies” around the yard once a day, and the rest of her time is devoted to napping – usually with most of her body OFF the bed.
With the exception of her trademark backend bald patches, the remainder of her hair has regrown BEAUTIFULLY. We have no idea where she learned it (it’s not a Greyhound trait), but she barks at the doorbell (and the Netflix tone). Of course, she then runs to the other end of the house, so she’s not the most efficient guard dog. She’s still shy around strangers, but once she learns she gets pets, she warms up. She’s come a long way from the terrified girl we saw at the rescue.
And she makes our little family complete. The cats think of her as that “really big cat who goes outside.” She sees the cats as “the little cats with the little toys.” It works perfectly.
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