He inherited 34 dogs — half of them puppies — then began honoring his father’s legacy

When Jim McNeely died last year, he left a legacy of love for family, dedication to keeping his patients healthy and pride in his community.

And Siberian Huskies.

Lots of Siberian Huskies.

Seventeen adults he had loved and tended their entire lives and, within a week of his death, 17 puppies in three litters.

Jim, 72 when he died, had bred and sold Siberian Huskies for about 20 years without officially making it a business. They were known as“Jim’s dogs.” If you took one of Jim’s dogs into your home, you knew you were getting a healthy pet, one that would easily adapt to the lifestyle you offered.

Jeff McNeely, the younger of Jim and Michele McNeely’s two sons, said his father usually offered only two or three litters of puppies to potential customers per year. He’s unsure how three litters arrived within mere days of each other. Maybe his father, a family nurse practitioner who was looking at the recurrence of his rare cancer, got mixed up on dates. Maybe two of the dogs took matters into their own hands.

No matter how it happened, it happened.

What did matter was that 34 dogs needed attention.

So McNeely has stepped up. The Sioux Falls software developer, father to one son himself, has stepped up to follow in his footsteps. Not only has he split the time since his father’s death Nov. 1, 2022, between here and Murdo, where he grew up, tending the dogs, he also plans on keeping up the McNeely family tradition of breeding Siberian Huskies.

He has purchased a 3-acre property at Renner that will allow him the space to breed dogs and give his own room to run. And, he has found homes for 14 of the 17 puppies while looking for people willing to adopt the older animals still living in Murdo.

For McNeely, that has meant almost weekly trips home to take the burden of caring for the dogs from his mother. Those trips have taken place during a winter that has seen regular — and massive — snowstorms.

“December was the toughest month,” he said with a sigh. “(Interstate) 90 was shut down, and I was trapped in Murdo. After Christmas, they got their first puppy shots. They were 8 to 9 weeks old, and I knew Dad weaned them off their mothers at that point. Then, I brought them to Sioux Falls.”

McNeely turned his garage into a kennel and began offering the dogs for sale, carefully vetting any prospective buyers. He knew he wanted to keep three from the different litters — two for himself and one for his brother, James, who lives in Connecticut.

For a time, puppies went quickly. Then, interest slowed. His intentions of starting a web page were thwarted by demands on his time: too many dogs to tend to, too few hours with 5-year-old Jameson, a full-time job and those trips to Murdo.

Then, one of his buyers stepped in. Stephanie and Chris Nicolaisen and their four kids had adopted one of the puppies, now named Kota. They had seen McNeely’s story posted on a Facebook church page and reached out.

“We already have a dog and a cat and a hamster, plus I do an in-home day care. We didn’t need a puppy. It would be like a newborn baby. But we went there and fell in love,” Stephanie Nicolaisen said. “She’s amazing. Hands-down amazing. We’ve had her for a month now. She knows her name, she’s potty trained basically and kennel trained at night.”

She posted about her happiness with the new pet and McNeely’s need to find homes for several more. It was costly to feed all the dogs, he had told the Nicolaisens, and his hours were being stretched tight.

Within two days, all the puppies had found good homes.

McNeely now is concentrating on finding homes for the older dogs. He has been in contact with Adopt a Husky of Minnesota, seeking new owners or fosters at some future point. First, he wants to get kennels set up at his new property at Renner so he can befriend the dogs.

“Once they’re here, I can socialize with them and get to learn their personalities,” he said. “It’s so hard to do from 200 miles away.”

McNeely considers finding the perfect property for his dogs “divine intervention.” He has two Siberian Huskies of his own, Skeeter and Porkchop. They are both elderly, and keeping two dogs from his father’s last litters will ensure he won’t be without a pet.

“I’ve had a Husky since I was 8 years old,” he said. “That would be weird.”

McNeely is considering keeping four of Jim’s older animals as pets and potential breeders. His likely goal is to get down to less than seven dogs total.

Huskies frequently have startling ice-blue eyes or one brown and one blue eye. The physical trait that is guaranteed, McNeely said, is a big smile with the tongue lolling out of their mouth.

He’s not sure what makes Siberian Huskies so lovable.

“I don’t know if it’s because they’re a close descendant to wolves, but to me it’s their pack mentality, you just being their leader,” McNeely said. “Every Husky I’ve seen adapts to their owner’s lifestyle. If you’re super active, they run and play with you. If you want to be a den creature, they snuggle up and cuddle.”

One downside does exist, he acknowledged: “You have a lot of hair (to vacuum). But lots of love — you can’t get away from them.”

For the McNeely family, the Siberian Huskies also got them outdoors for one of their favorite winter activities: dog sledding. When McNeely was in high school, the family traveled to the Black Hills and had the opportunity to ride on a dog sled.

“Dad fell off a trail sled and hurt his shoulder and back. He had surgery years later partially because of that,” McNeely said.

Despite that, Jim was hooked. And, when McNeely was a student at Dakota State University, several times he and his friends would go mushing at the trails around nearby state parks.

The last time he and his father used the dog sleds was the winter of 2020-21.

“We went to Good Earth State Park and had a bunch of people from church come out, and it was a lot of fun,” McNeely said. “Good Earth was very receptive to it … and said next time tell us and we’ll make a whole big thing out of it.”

That was before Jim’s initial diagnosis, and the cancer treatment began. That was before McNeely’s marriage ended. It was before all the tumult that 2022 brought.

It has been a struggle, McNeely said, with the end of his marriage and the death of his father. He doesn’t like to ask for help, he acknowledged. But at a recent Christian retreat, he was struck the aptness of Proverbs 14:4, which he paraphrases as “It takes a lot of sh** to make new soil.”

“Oh, I see you,” he thought to himself as the proverb hit home literally and figuratively with hours of cleaning up after almost three dozen dogs.

Now, it’s time to look to the future, a future that will always include Siberian Huskies and likely will include the second generation of McNeelys breeding the loyal, outgoing and mischievous dogs.

McNeely’s plans are definite, but he won’t walk away from the legacy of his father, a man who loved his family, his patients and his dogs.

“I’m trying to help Mom out and do what’s best for the dogs,” he said. “I have the memories and joys and legacies that’s Dad and dogs, and what is around that, being able to take people dog sledding and see their job. I don’t want to let that go soon. I don’t know that I can do everything. … I love it when I’m around it. When I’m doing it, I find passion for it.”