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The scenery of Jake’s life changed dramatically when we went home. I am an artist by profession. At that time I was living on a very remote part of the northern California coast, where I enjoyed the solitude to create paintings which I shipped to galleries. Jake came to live with me on a mountaintop overlooking one of the most wild and rugged parts of the Pacific coast, known as “The Lost Coast”.
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Below: Kevin and Jake (age 2) near their home on the Lost Coast.
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Our nearest neighbor was over a mile away. Jake came to be my companion and partner, a dog who would go for help if I was injured in that remote forest, run beside my motorcycle on the five-mile trip down the rough headland to the beach, protect my elderly cat from bobcats and cougars.
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By the time Jake was two, he was doing all those things and more. His endurance was astonishing. Jake was a big dog, 29 inches, and had grown up to be extremely powerful. But he had a grace and elegance that made him pure poetry to watch. From the time Jake was a little puppy he possessed marvelous coordination. He never slipped off-balance, never put a foot down wrong, even in the most extreme demands of athleticism. I have never witnessed another dog with the perfect combination of grace and power that made Jake magnificent. |
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