Jamie joins the pack
Jamie was born on November 14, 2009 at Summerhill Samoyeds in Langley, BC. A month later, Megan and I decided to get a dog, and after I told her about Rex, the Samoyed I'd had 25 years earlier, we decided to try to find a Samoyed. One thing led to another, and on January 10, 2010 we drove to Canada and picked up Jamie.
The drive from Jamie's birthplace in Canada to our home in Seattle.
Jamie meeting Fish and Ike. Fish (left) had been aggressive and combative with other dogs before Jamie came along, but he walked right up to Jamie and bumped noses, and they got along great for many years to come. Ike (right) hid from Jamie until he got worn out and fell asleep, and then slowly approached to check out the new pack member.
Jamie's first evening in his new home.
Left: Jamie's first leash walk. Right: Jamie on a walk past the same spot on Seward Park Avenue three months later.
For nine months, until Alice's arrival in October of 2010, Jamie was a solo dog living with two humans and three cats.
Jamie getting to know his new surroundings. He loved digging in the gravel in our side yard, which eventually led to us building a massive gravel pit for the pack at our home in Montana. He enjoyed sitting on the front steps and playing in the living room, activities he would share with Alice when she arrived.
We were thrilled to have Jamie, and during those first few months we all but stopped doing non-Jamie things. Our days were divided into work, sleep, and being with Jamie.
Bonding with Jamie.
Jamie came to work with us every day, and we would take turns walking him. Every morning on the way to work (we both worked at Microsoft in Redmond then), we would compare our schedules and figure out when we could each walk him. He slept in the truck between walks, usually in a quiet corner of the underground parking garage under one of our offices.
Jamie took many night walks, usually around downtown Seattle or Renton.
Jamie loved playing at the beach. His local beach was Marine View Park (the beach I played at as a young boy, long before it was a park), and we also took him on trips to the Washington Coast, where he got to know the beaches around Kalaloch, Ruby Beach, and La Push.
We took Jamie on some hikes early on, but we didn't care for the popular trails in the Seattle area, where people were often hiking with ill-behaved off-leash dogs. After an incident at Little Mount Si, where Jamie was frightened by a big off-leash dog, we drove out the bumpy road of the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River Valley, 40 miles east of Seattle in the Cascade Mountains, hoping to find some solitude. We had an enjoyable hike along the Taylor River, and soon the Middle Fork Valley was our favorite weekend destination for hikes with Jamie.
Photos from Jamie's first hikes at the Middle Fork Valley.
On a morning in early October of that year, I snapped a few photos of Jamie trying to get Fish to play with him in our kitchen. We had already made arrangements to get Alice later that month, and it seemed cute that Jamie was trying to get Fish to play – I remember telling him "just wait, Jamie, we're going to get you a puppy to play with."
I quickly put together a triptych of three photos from that incident and posted them on Jamie's Facebook page before rushing off to work.
Within a couple of weeks, Jamie's "boop" photo with Fish had been copied to thousands of places across many social media platforms and websites, where it had millions of total views. Due to all the publicity, Jamie's Facebook page quickly grew from a couple hundred followers to thousands. A young woman even recorded a song about Jamie booping Fish (which you can listen to here), and we played it for Jamie.
The stage was set for the arrival of Alice.