Meet Juno! His name is short for Juniper, and his official AKC name is Drops of Juniper, a play on the song Drops of Jupiter by Train. We had a scary journey to bring Juno home, but he's doing super well now and we love him so much. Here's the story:

We live in Connecticut, and there weren't many reputable breeders around us. Thankfully, we found a great breeder up in New Hampshire. If you're interested in Juno's pedigree, you can search up his sister Midnight White's Answered Prayers on PawVillage. This is Juno's daddy Boomer. Photo credit: Midnight White Siberians.



And this is Juno's mama Berry. She never showed due to being a hair under 20 inches. Very petite gal! Boomer is a really big boy though, so our breeder was hoping they would complement each other nicely.



Juno and his five other littermates were born on Thanksgiving 2016.



Getting much cuter at 2 weeks!



Floppy ear at 4 weeks.



His eye colors are becoming more apparent at 5 weeks.



At 6 weeks, we had the scare of our lives when our breeder told us Berry unexpectedly died after only one day of showing any symptoms. Her autopsy report said she died of parvo. Our breeder tested the puppies several times for parvo, but somehow none of them got it. The vets said it was a miracle. We have no idea how Berry got it. She was vaccinated, and none of our breeder's 30 other dogs got sick. For the next few weeks, we crossed our fingers for Juno.

Juno was depressed after Berry died and had to be hand-fed. He's getting more and more handsome every day, though. Our breeder tells us that Juno is by far the cuddliest out of the litter and loves being held.



And it's finally time to bring him home! 8 weeks, meeting daddy for the first time. He does great in the car ride.



His eyes are the most interesting colors. The brown one isn't amber at all. It's almost grey.



In his first week with us, he has already learned come, sit, down, and stand. He knows his name and he sits for his meals. We've had trouble with soft stools and are trying everything we can to fix it. He is almost 100% potty trained. He has been swimming, met a pig, and already started to hump other dogs...he's growing like a weed!



His first snow!



Looking at me like ugh mommy why are you taking a picture of me.



We love Juno to death!

You've got yourself a really cute pup there and from an apparently fantastic breeder (yeh, I had to go looking). That set of pictures is really quite an introduction to the family.

I have to ask, does he look so red in the picture with "daddy" as a reflection of the beard or does he really have a reddish cast?

Thank you! Yes we're really happy with our breeder. We're hoping to get another pup from her in a year or so.

He does have a reddish cast to him, but I think it looks especially red in that photo from the setting sun. And daddy's beard! Our breeder thinks his coat will turn out like his dad's. We'll see.

he is adorable, beautiful marking and very cool eyes.

Thanks! I noticed your dog Leo has bi-eyes too. Have his changed a lot in color since he was a puppy?

dropsofjuniper wrote:

Thanks! I noticed your dog Leo has bi-eyes too. Have his changed a lot in color since he was a puppy?

his eye change quite a bit from 5 weeks to 4 months old. some pics.

his eye was blue/gray at 5 weeks old.


green at 10 weeks old.


then by 4 months old  hazel/amber.



then at one year old it has more or less stayed at hazel/amber deepening on how hot he is. it tends to change to amber when he is hot and looks more green when he is cold; mood ring eye, hehe.

That is so cool!! He looks stunning in all of those. What color were his parents' eyes? Juno's dad had one brown and one parti-eye and his mom had blue.

dropsofjuniper wrote:

That is so cool!! He looks stunning in all of those. What color were his parents' eyes? Juno's dad had one brown and one parti-eye and his mom had blue.

thanks, he mom had double brown and dad had double blue. some of his half-sibling have bi-eyes an one or two of his sisters.

Very pretty puppy, so sad about his mom though welcome to the forum!

I just wanted to say this forum has been tremendously helpful. We had our first solid poop ever today, all thanks to you guys! Juno had been having soft stool pretty much since he was born. Both his breeder and I did everything we could to fix it. He was tested for everything under the sun, dewormed just in case, and I switched him to a limited ingredient kibble to see if that was the issue. Nothing worked. Finally I decided to try raw, after seeing that a number of people here had great success with it. Juno has had three meals of raw chicken so far, and he is like a completely different dog.

He loves it sooo much, he gets that expression of complete bliss while he's eating. It's the same one he gets when he scratches just the right spot lol. And he's so much calmer. He doesn't go crazy and scream and whine before meals, he just sits there and waits patiently. AND HIS POOP. It's finally solid, and he went from pooping 6-8 times a day to only 2 in 24 hours. I really didn't want to do raw, because of the potential risks associated with it. But now I'm fully on board.

Here's Juno at 10 weeks doing a sorta stack. Our breeder commented that he had a very nice stop and topline, even better than the two she kept from the litter haha. I think Juno was her favorite, but she didn't need any more boys.



Practicing "look".



Typical napping position.



Enjoying our first blizzard of the year! We got more than a foot. Juno absolutely loves it, but he does try to eat all the snow. Will that make him sick?



Seriously, how am I supposed to get any studying done when I've got this puppy in my lap?

he's adorable, Leo sleeps like that in the summer hahaha.

Glad the uhh potty situation worked itself out! That's noooo fun...beautiful pup!

Juno is doing great! He is growing like a weed and eating like a champ. Nothing ever seems to tire him out. Every day he gets more and more energy. He used to go down for naps after eating, but not anymore! He is also getting really sassy. He talks back to just about anything and everyone. Yesterday, he got mad at the ground because it wouldn't let him dig up a tree root.

This morning, I took him out even though we were due for a thunderstorm since I knew he needed the exercise. It's crazy that we're getting thunderstorms in February in the Northeast! Juno is not happy with global warming. He gets so hot even in the 60s. He didn't mind the rain at all. Halfway through our walk it started to thunder, and I was a little nervous we'd get struck by lightning, but he didn't care. He thought it was fun to splash in puddles. When we got back home, though, he seemed a bit annoyed that he was still wet. I caught this picture of him, looking a little mopey.

I haven't gotten to see how my new one likes walking in the rain but he too loves to play in puddles. And leaves. There's something about leaf piles.

Ahhhh, what a cute pic. Both of my girls love water. As far as the heat Juno is young and will acclimate, it may take awhile, my gsd girl had the same issue as a young pup but is now good into the 70s. My husky girl doesn't care if its 20 or 80, lol.

Jenn, how old is your pup? Juno is definitely warming up to water. He's gotten in trouble at daycare for splashing water in bowls all over the floor! Haha. We've taken him swimming in an indoor pool every week since we got him. He's a great swimmer, but he's still nervous about jumping in.

Renee, do your girls swim? I'm hoping we can take Juno to the beach and to lakes when he gets older. Oh that's good to know. I was wondering how huskies survive in places like Florida and Texas if New England is too hot for them!

Here's Juno being a doofus when I took him out after the storm passed. He was having a lot of fun leaping in the air and "catching" a tree branch.



How much exercise did you guys give your pups at around 14 weeks? I know about the 5 min/month rule, but lately Juno needs a solid 3 hours a day or else he gets really restless. We usually do 3 walks where we'll walk on leash 15 min, roll around and play for 30, then walk 15 min back home. Even by the end of these walks, he runs all the way home and then he does laps around the living room. The only thing that gets him tired is playing with other puppies, and even then he goes down for a 2-hour nap and is ready to go again. I don't know what to do with all his energy when I can't run him or walk him more than 15 min at a time! What else can I do to tire him out?

Rebecca, Miya and Sofie are big time swimmers. My gsd pup Sofie was exactly like Juno, digging in the water bowls, lol. They grow out of that, but they still swim every chance possible. For some reason I got an odd ball gsd that slept too close to my husky Miya, and I swear she has similar traits of a husky (the only exception is that she is exceptional off leash, huskies typically not). Anywho........both of my girls were not big time nappers. With both of them I did similar to you, trained, played, and walked. The 5 minute rule is mostly for walks where you wont stop and on hard surfaces, like roads and concrete. Do you have your own yard? I did a lot of perimeter walking, so they knew their boundaries, taught some proper leash walking, teaching other commands. I also incorporated training within playing, so teaching drop it and leave it with balls. Tugs if she dropped it in order for the game to resume she had to do a command, the game is the reward. If she dropped it again a different command. You can also take walks like in a park where there is soft ground and time it 15 minutes then relax let him sniff around or just watch the world go by, walk some more, etc. Hope that helps a bit and ask if you need any clarity.

Haha that's awesome your GSD is a wannabe husky! Of course, I'm biased since I think huskies are the best. I've recently discovered that Juno is amazing off-leash. After everything I've heard about huskies, I thought for sure he would take off running the moment I took off the leash, but he is perfect! He follows us everywhere and comes when called, even in the middle of chasing something. I don't know if he'll change as he goes through adolescence, but I really hope not. He has so much fun off-leash.

Yes, we do have our own yard, but it's not fenced and it's on the smaller side, so that makes things harder. We have done a lot of leash work, and he's really good for the most part. The problem with training while playing is that he's not very game or toy motivated. If I made him do a command to get his toy back, he would just walk away. He's also not very good at drop it. Especially since we started feeding raw, he couldn't care less about treats.

This morning I ended up taking him to a park. I didn't want to take him anywhere public until he got all his shots, but I think he needs it. He absolutely loved it and did really great off-leash! We were there for about an hour, but I think he could've gone for one more.

beautiful pics, adorable wet face pic.
Leo was not a energetic puppy, we would play for 20 min, eat or get his food form a treat ball, do some training then nap for about 4 hours and repeat.