Fur-ever Valentines: Melissa & WCC’s Healy

Valentine’s Day 2023 brought Melissa neither flowers nor chocolate — it brought Healy, a life-changing companion. Approaching three years later, she still calls it the best Valentine she’s ever received.

Their match wasn’t an instant, movie-style moment. It unfolded quietly, in the way real love usually does.

“It didn’t happen overnight,” Melissa says. “I just started realizing I wasn’t doing this alone anymore.”

Before Healy, leaving the house felt heavy. Doctor’s appointments were traumatic and exhausting. Social events took courage she didn’t always have. Melissa had recently been medically retired from the Army as a Medical Service Officer and was still finding her footing in a new job when Healy arrived. Within months, something shifted.

“I felt more confident going to events, doing things,” she says. “He became an easy talking point. People remembered me because of him.”

But the bigger change wasn’t how others saw her — it was how she saw herself.

With Healy by her side, Melissa started pushing herself to do more. She biked. She traveled. She joined a new gym. She built real relationships with neighbors she’d lived near for years but never truly known. At a local diner, interactions became conversations, not transactions. If Healy isn’t with her, people ask where he is.

Love, for them, shows up in the routine. In the quiet reassurance of walking into a doctor’s office together. In the way Healy braces her on stairs when her Addison’s Disease flares. In the steady presence that helped her reduce therapy from weekly to every other week.

“Not just mentally,” Melissa says, “but physically and emotionally.”

There have been big moments, too. France. Switzerland. Portugal. The Five Boro Bike Ride — twice, with a third likely on the horizon. The travel takes leg work: vet visits, airline approvals, endless planning.

“It’s not easy,” she says. “But it’s always worth it.”

Each year, Melissa and Healy mark their anniversary with a tradition of their own — an annual photo shoot with a local, professional photographer. This year’s will be their third, a visual reminder of how far they’ve come together.

Melissa shares Healy is smart, stubborn, persistent and quirky — traits she admittedly says they share.

“He’s hysterical,” she laughs. “He sucks on his tail. He hates the boots I put on him in bad weather. But we all have our quirks.”

Even dating comes with Healy in the picture. He goes on dates, too — observant and discerning, with an uncanny ability to read people. Melissa jokes there’s a lot to live up to with this “male” already in her life.

Through job loss (Melissa’s position was eliminated a few months ago), health ups and downs and uncertainty, Healy has been her constant.

“He’s so amazing,” she says through tears. “I can’t even put into words how much he means to me and the impact he’s had on me. There’s no way to qualify all he does.”

On a holiday built around love, Melissa found the kind that lasts — not flashy or fleeting, but steady, faithful and always by her side.
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