She met a young husky while undergoing treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, shortly after receiving chemotherapy in the summer of 2013. She immediately felt a connection with the dog and decided to bring him into her family.
She gave him a name that would eventually seem almost destined:
Semper Fidelis, Latin for “Always faithful.”
She affectionately called him Semper.
And for Mares, the name wasn’t just a name.
“He’s always been faithful to me,” she said.
What she couldn’t have known at the time was that years later, that faithfulness would be tested by an unexpected separation—and that finding Semper again would require an extraordinary amount of patience, persistence, and hope.
