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By Rachel Reed – Co-Owner RE/MAX Shoreline – Portsmouth, NH & Portland, ME

We never saw ourselves as “dog people.” Dogs seemed messy - they got into the trash, peed in the house, shed lots of fur, rolled in God-knows-what outside and then brought it in, collected ticks… and besides, we didn’t have the time to devote to properly caring for one, given our two busy careers and our children’s schedules. Children love to have pets, so we had two very special fish, Bluey and Goldie.

Our son Max really wanted a dog, and he would spend hours with our friend’s dog. Our friend Marcy would try to explain that dogs provide unconditional love; that no matter what the dynamics were going on in the house, the dog loved everyone; and that it was a tremendous source of happiness and comfort to have a dog. Still, we just couldn’t find our way to dog ownership. Then, in the winter of 2014 my husband died suddenly. My two boys and I were very traumatized, and we were each grieving in our own way, yet we somehow kept it together thanks to the love and kindness of our amazing friends, relatives and community members. However, when my oldest son Sam left for college in the autumn of 2015, just Max and I remained in our home together and our relationship became quite polarized. As the months went by without happiness in our home, I remembered my friend Marcy’s words; and I decided that, for us, it was now an important time to get a dog.

To be honest with myself, I was comforted by the fact that our carpet was over 25 years old and in bad need of replacement, so my confidence that I could make this work was high despite the difficulties I anticipated as a result of this decision. Nonetheless, the decision was made. In May 2016, Buck the Beagle entered our lives. We found him on the Lewiston, Maine Animal Refuge League site, and we just knew he had to be ours. He was one of a large shipment of puppies that had been rescued from a kill shelter in Louisiana, and he was not yet available for adoption. We called to verify his availability date and the procedure for getting in line to be considered as an adoptive family; and we crossed our fingers. And our toes. Twice! When Buck came into our household, it became a home again. There was love and laughter and fun again. There was talking again, too. We had to discuss the care and training of our rather stubborn little Beagle puppy with his great sense of humor. We had to find a daycare for those days that neither of us could be home and choose the very best dog food for him and figure out transportation to the vet…there was talking again.

Buck was Max’s high school graduation gift, and training Buck became his summer project. When Sam arrived home from his first year of college, and Max was going off to travel with friends, Sam took over some of these tasks, as well. There was even more talking and more caring and more love. Over time, we became a happy, functional family again. Buck had saved us.

To this day, Buck is the center of love in our home, and we are centered because of him. And we could care less about all those aspects of dog ownership that we had seen as insurmountable inconveniences in the past, especially the carpet. We don’t know where we would be now had Buck not entered our lives, and we can’t imagine life without him.