Juniper Friday! A Bewildering Reunion

Juniper, a puppy, wrestles with Kona, another puppy.

Juniper was the smallest puppy in a litter of eleven who were born into the shelter from which we adopted her. At a scant 16 weeks of age, she was taking frequent walks around the apartment complex where we were living at the time. One such sunny day, a guy walking a puppy of his own spotted me from a distance, then ran over to me and shouted, with clear enthusiasm, “Is that a Fairy puppy?!”

Indeed it was, for Fairy was Juniper’s black mouth cur mother.

Kona, the dark-snouted pup tusslin’ with Juniper in this photo, is Juniper’s brother, born in the same litter. The mutual recognition was immediate and they started bumbling all over one another with such vigor that we let them both off leash so they wouldn’t tie each other into a puppy knot. As it turns out, another couple in the complex had coincidentally adopted Kona from the same shelter, and having spotted us in the distance, his owner decided, correctly, that the pups looked similar enough to ask.

Ultimately, Juniper and Kona never spent all that much time together. They would see one another around the property from time to time, but before long everyone had moved away from that apartment complex anyway. Nevertheless, their few brief orbits around one another before their paths diverged was one of the factors that inspired us to consider adopting a second dog soon. Barley joined us only a few months later.