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I wish I could say that Jules was a good dog, but she really wasn’t. She was probably the most impatient and high strung Laborador mix that ever existed. My son’s first full phrase was “Go Julie Go!”. What she lacked in manners though, she made up for in lovability. To understand Jules, you needed to understand her main purpose in life – attention. It didn’t matter if it was good or bad attention, just that someone was paying attention to her. If she wanted your attention, she would get it by stealing something off the table and destroying it or whining in a high pitched shrill for hours (literally) on end.

We got Jules when Vince was about 8 months old and we decided he needed a friend. We went to the Animal Rescue League and looked at a few dogs, finally deciding on Jules because of her kind face and seemingly laid back demeanor. HA! Less than 1 mile from the ARL, she had Vince (30 lbs out of her weight class) pinned and crying in the back seat. Jules was ALWAYS the alpha dog. We would take her to a local hiking trail near our house and if anyone gave Vince or Moose a hard time, she would let them know it wasn’t cool. Didn’t matter how big the other dog was, Vince was her bitch and everyone was going to know about it.

You couldn’t stop Jules you could only hope to contain her. Or not. To keep the dogs in the yard, we spent about $2000 on a fence. In a couple weeks, Jules had found a way to force her way underneath it and would disappear into the woods for an hour or two at a time. At first, we put large rocks where she was getting out. She would ultimately find another way out. When we got tired of chasing her, we put an electric fence around the real fence. It took me many hours to do this, and within 10 minutes she decided the 5 seconds of shocks were worth the price of freedom, rendering the electric fence useless.

One of my favorite Julie moments was the day she was insistent that there was something under the couch. I couldn’t see anything interesting and told her to stop, but eventually my brother lifed up the couch and she grabbed something that looked like a small piece of black felt and took off. 20 minutes later I went to check on her and found her under a bed with a piece of black string hanging out of her mouth. When I opened her mouth to find out what was so interesting, much to my surprise I found a very wet and nervous black mouse. still very much alive. I put him back in the woods, but I’m not sure if he ever got over the 20 minutes of captivity in prison de Julie. Jules was not as kind to several other moles and mice (and one time, a rabbit) she brought inside to show us.

When we were pregnant with Liam, we were concerned about how Jules would handle the transition. Though she missed all the attention and made it very clear she should be our first priority, she got along with Liam great. It was obvious she understood that the baby was to be approached with great caution and she was always very gentle. When Liam started walking, we were nervous about how she would handle him prying at her constantly. She couldn’t have handled it better. She let Liam give her constant hugs and even drag her around the house by the leash. It’s really too bad that we can’t watch them grow up together.

Unfortunately, Jules made her final escape the day of the giant ice storm and was (we think) hit by a car and died on the way to the vet. Though initially it was really hard hearing Liam call her name (Doowie! Doowie!) when he saw pictures of her, I find it comforting to know he remembers her. We’ll always miss Julie, the most annoying and lovable dog I’ve ever met.