Community
26 April, 2025
A dog and his good mate
A RELATIONSHIP between a pining dog and the man next door has received the best neighbour award as part of Neighbour Day, held late last month by The Port Douglas Community Service Network.
The network called on locals to nominate a favourite neighbour.
A large response from the community made a challenge for the team, based at the Port Douglas Neighbourhood Centre, to choose a winner, but eventually they did.
“It was truly inspiring to read so many wonderful stories of kindness, connection and community,” said centre community recovery connect and development worker Tracy Gibson.
“Choosing a winner was no easy task, but we were thrilled to announce that the best neighbour award goes to George Luksa and Chrissie Rosevear,” she said.
Nominated by Jocelyn Schumacher, George and Chrissie’s story stood out as a beautiful example of what it means to be a great neighbour.
“Our story is actually about our family dog called Bundy (a Maltese/shi tzu/lhasa), which began when we moved into the house next to George and Chrissie,” Ms Schumacher said.
“When we left for work in the morning leaving Bundy at home, he worked out that George was next door and would start barking for him,” she said.
“George would let Bundy out of our garden and they would hang out together all day until the kids returned home from school.”
This carried on for a number of years to the point where the loving neighbours joked that they should have joint custody of Bundy.
“Whenever we would go on holidays George and Chrissie would always look after Bundy for us,” Ms Schumacher said.
Eventually, Ms Schumacher and her husband Travis moved around the corner, but not without much consideration of how moving away would affect George and Bundy.
In order to remedy this situation, they chose to take Bundy around to George and Chrissie’s every day so they could hang out together as before.
“George and Chrissie are the most beautiful people. They have become like family and surrogate grandparents to our kids as well,” Ms Schumacher said.
Sadly, Bundy died last year having had a very happy life.
He was cremated, with both owners and neighbours jointly deciding to have Bundy put into two urns so that he can rest easy with both families.
Read More: Port Douglas
