Bruce Springsteen

Sponsored by E Clendenning

I don’t take the naming of dogs after humans lightly, as humans are flawed and complex creatures and it’s a lot to ask the perfect soul of a dog to carry the name of a human. With one notable exception (Celine Dion), the human names have been writers as activists, social justice leaders, who used their positions to try honestly to alter the imbalance in the world and speak truth: Oriana Fallaci, Joan Didion, Victor Hugo, Marian Pychowska, and, also, Bruce Springsteen. 

Bruce Springsteen the dog has always been different from his siblings. As a puppy, he was one of three in the nine-near-identical Jersey Shore/ Lilliputians that were easy to identify, along with his fawn-colored sister Squan and his distinctively dark sister Copper. He was the first out of the puppy pool, and one of the first who figured out how to bust out of the puppy pen. When the pups were outside in the larger pen, Bruce was the one who climbed the highest up the fence when clamoring for dinner. A lot of this was driven by his love for food, but it was also driven by his physical embodiment of his dad’s insane energy. As he’s grown, he’s turned into a puffy, constantly grinning, tank of a dog who is the most playful and social of all his siblings Bruce has begun channeling and directing this insane energy into his own form of it, turning it into a force of love and devotion.

As he’s grown, Bruce is starting to show some of the qualities of his mom Aurora, calming down slightly and showing his more affectionate side, raising a ‘princess paw’ and giving me some Aurora-like woo woos. Bruce, like his siblings, is unbelievably trainable and quickly learned to jump on his house for attention and how to self-load into the dog box. I may or may not have spent a lot of time with him in the dog yard in the summer, tapping the house and having him jump up for attention, and then laugh as he wheels around to catapult off and launch towards his neighbors, his longtime BFF and emotional support animal Loki and now the patient Willie Nelson Jr who is teaching him to be more gentle in play.

The smallest of his brothers, Bruce is also the hardest-driving and is the only one of the boys to make it on the adult team and jump right into the longer runs and serious adult energy. Bruce, like his dad, runs anywhere in the team except lead, and has the mindless can’t-stop-won’t-stop energy. When we did one camp run, Bruce immediately fell asleep in the straw, and then just radiated pure joy on the second leg when he realized we were still running, that he was lucky enough to spend his whole day on the trail. Bruce is a talented sled dog with a bright future!

In picking a human name for the Jersey Shore litter, Bruce was the obvious choice as he not only was one of my cousin Suzy’s favorites, he’s been one of those artists and singers who does more than perform. The Jersey Shore litter was named in memory of my cousin and godmother Suzy, who died the same night these pups were born after two years of fighting cancer. Suzy was a relentless cheerleader for me, and loved all the dogs, and took great pride in her Jersey Girl-ness.

Born: 7/26/2019

Aurora (Stielstra) x Zippo (Hendricks): Jersey Shore/ aka Lilliputians
Pedigree here.

race record

2022
Can Am 30: 12th place