ST. JOHNSBURY: Anne Pace has been hearing about Dog Mountain for years, but until earlier this month, had never made a trip to the park.
“I really wanted to see this place,” she said, during a visit to the grounds with her one-year-old border collie, Tam. “I put a note up for my previous border collie. He was my best buddy.”
Set on 150 acres tucked away on a hillside in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, Dog Mountain has become a destination for dog lovers looking to explore nature, take in art, or pay tribute to a pet.
The park was created 25 years ago by Vermont folk artist Stephen Huneck and his wife, Gwen, and features hiking trails, swimming ponds, an art gallery and a Dog Chapel where visitors can add to the thousands of photos and notes to pets that cover the chapel walls.
“It is absolutely breathtaking. That’s a lot of love when you think about each picture that’s here,” said Vanessa Hurley, who was visiting with her husband and two dogs from Ohio. “Dogs and cats both, they just bring so much enjoyment to our lives,” she said.
Inspired by the bond he shared with his dogs, Huneck wanted to create a space where other animal lovers could celebrate their beloved pets, gallery manager Pam McCann said.
“Dog Mountain is really a pilgrimage place and a sanctuary,” she said.
Huneck’s sculpture, prints and furniture are featured in the gallery and scattered throughout the park, including inside the chapel he built himself. With black labs and golden retrievers carved into the ends of each pew and images of his own dog, Sally, in the stained-glass windows, his love of dogs is evident in every detail.
Scott Ritchie and his wife, Julie, have been traveling the country in an RV with their three large dogs and thought Dog Mountain would be the perfect place for them to stretch their legs. They enjoyed it so much on their first visit, they decided to come back the next day.
“It’s very rare you see something like this anywhere. We’ve been traveling all over the US for five and a half months. Just a beautiful area,” he said.
McCann says the park was made for visitors like Ritchie.
“That’s what it’s for, people who really care and people who are very connected to everything around them,” she said. “Including the animals that they are the guardians of.”
A massive mountain park in Vermont celebrates the bond between dogs and their humans
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A massive mountain park in Vermont celebrates the bond between dogs and their humans
Mick Jagger’s fiancee ‘physically attacked’ at exclusive London club
- Melanie Hamrick, 38, dined with a friend before heading to private members’ club Annabel’s in Berkeley Square, Mayfair, where the incident happened
- The author, choreographer and former ballerina has been in a relationship with the 82-year-old Rolling Stones singer since 2014 and they have a 9-year-old son together
LONDON: Melanie Hamrick, Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger’s fiancee, said she was attacked at an elite and exclusive private member’s club in Mayfair, central London.
The 38-year-old said the incident on Tuesday at Annabel’s in Berkeley Square had left her heartbroken and shaken.
In a message posted later that night on Instagram, she wrote: “This is incredibly hard to share, but I was physically attacked at Annabel’s Mayfair tonight.
“I’m so thankful to my friends for protecting me. Two people grabbed me from behind and thank God for the good people who stepped in to help me.
“I’m shaken, sad and heartbroken that people can treat each other this way.”
The message was deleted a few hours after it appeared.
Hamrick has been in a relationship with 82-year-old Jagger since 2014, and she confirmed in April last year that they became engaged about two or three years earlier. They have a son, Deveraux, who was born in 2016.
Hamrick is a choreographer, author and former ballerina who performed with the American Ballet Theatre for 15 years before retiring in 2019.
Before the incident on Tuesday, she had dined with a socialite friend, Emma Thynn, before heading to Annabel’s. Sources at the venue said staff were not notified of an attack. The Metropolitan Police said it had not receive any report of an incident, the Daily Mail newspaper reported.
The incident is believed to have taken place outside of the club. In the past few weeks there has been a series of daytime heists targeting luxury goods stores across London. It is not known if the incident involving Hamrick was related to these.
However, the area around the prestigious Berkeley Square has become one of the worst in London, and even in Europe, for robberies and street crime, the Daily Mail said. Official figures show that people in the area were 30 times more likely to fall victim to crime compared with those in other parts of the city, the newspaper added.
Numbers of thefts and robberies, mainly of mobile phones, have tripled in London over the past four years, with tens of thousands of reported cases, particularly in the upmarket Mayfair and St James’s areas.
Organized criminal gangs have reportedly been targeting high-value luxury brands such as Rolex and Yves Saint Laurent across London. Some visitors have even hired private security while visiting the city.
Last month, the Daily Mail reported that Tom Cruise, 63, had abruptly moved out of his £35 million ($47 million) luxury apartment in One Hyde Park, a high-rise in West London, over safety fears.
