Juno – Footloose Diary

Her name still echoes in the silence she left behind. It lingers like her scent after the snow—cold and fresh, like winter air clinging to her memory. The smell of her after a walk through the white landscapes, snowflakes melting into her coat, carrying with them the crispness of our favourite places. The scent of home, wild and free. Her absence is a weight I carry in places I didn’t know existed.

Qimmiq at just a few weeks old after being found orphaned in the snow, taken by her foster family a month before we met, standing before the mountains of Baffin Island, Nunavut, where her life began. It feels only fitting that I was able to give her the life she was destined for, one filled with open spaces to roam and to grow. To become Juno.

I think of the wilderness and how she belonged there. The way she pranced through open spaces, happy and free. I see her still—leading the way along narrow trails, disappearing into alpine meadows, wading through glacial streams. She would pause at waterfalls, ears pricked, as if listening to something I couldn’t hear. I remember her running along sandy beaches, climbing ridgelines where the islands dot the ocean below and the mountains touch the sky. She was always just ahead, chasing scents, keeping the bears at a distance. She gave the wild a shape, a softness, a sense of home. Our home.

Juno carried the quiet strength of the North. She moved with the patience of a living creature who had seen the fragility of life and decided to take her time with it. I learned from her: how to be still, how to breathe, how to listen, how to notice, how to be.

Sometimes I wondered if she was part wolf; her sharp gaze and stance hinted at something wild and untamed. She would pause on ridgelines, wind lifting her fur, and in those moments, I wondered if the mountains whispered to her to run free with the wolves. Who knows—maybe she was part of them. She belonged there—wild and free—as much a part of the mountains as the snow that blanketed them each winter.

Sixteen years…

How do you hold sixteen years in your hands when there is nothing left to touch? How do you gather the memories without them spilling through your fingers?

I miss the sound of her breath beside me in the dark. The comfort of her presence in the distance. The way she would lovingly argue with me, stubborn and full of personality, just to have the last word—as if winning our little debates was part of the bond we shared. I miss the way she would pause on the trail, looking back to make sure I was still there—always waiting, always watching, as if she knew we were meant to move through the world together. Her gaze—steady, knowing, loving. As if she understood everything I never said.

I still wake early sometimes, expecting her gentle howl. The stretch, the sigh when I greeted her each morning. The happy wag of her tail. The smile in her eyes—full of promise, full of certainty. Because as long as we were together, every day would be filled with magic. I reach for her without thinking. But the space is cold now. Still.

Time carries a different kind of silence—one I’m still learning to live with. Yet, when the snow falls, it brings her back to me. I can almost hear the soft press of her paws against the snow, neither of us saying a word. The world seemed slower then, softened by the white hush.

She would pause sometimes, nose lifted, eyes half-closed, breathing in the cold air as if it carried secrets only she could hear. I wonder what she felt in those moments. I wonder if she knew I was watching her, learning from her. Deeply loving her.

Grief is strange. It wraps itself around you slowly. You think you’re fine until the snow falls again. Until you step outside and feel the bite in the air. Until the world looks exactly as it did when she walked beside you, her fur dusted with white, her breath visible in the cold.

They say time heals. But I don’t want time to heal this. I don’t want to forget the ache because the ache is where she still lives. In the hollow spaces, in the pauses.

In the patch of carpet by the bed where she laid in her final days. In the strands of her fur that still drift through the air, because cleaning too much would feel like erasing her. In the empty den outside, the one I still haven’t had the heart to close. At the entrance of the trail we walked every day. In the way I still catch myself saving a piece of food for her, setting aside leftovers she will never eat. In the way I still search for pet-friendly getaways, always drawn to the places she would have loved the most.

But Juno is still here.

She lives in the wind through the trees, the hush of snowfall, the quiet before dawn. She lives in the way I hesitate at the door we once walked through together.

Juno lives in the way I linger in the places she loved.

And sometimes, I hear her howling in the wind. Her presence, steady and close. I sit still in nature, and for a moment—just a moment—I believe she’s still there.

I let myself believe.

Yes, that’s a freakin’ white rainbow in the background. Just when I was wondering if I could believe in the rainbow bridge, a white arc appeared over the mountains after Juno went to sleep, my shadow cast in the light. Filled with magic, I could almost hear her howl in the wild, like a whisper in the wind—just out of reach, but there all the same.

Love leaves marks. Juno left hers in the rhythm of my days, in the beauty that she taught me to see, in the quiet of a snowfall. In the spaces where silence is no longer empty but filled with her memory. Sixteen years. A lifetime of Juno.

And somehow, still not enough.