Take a ball or leave a ball, but most importantly — have a ball.
It's what Kaiya Jean would've wanted, at least that's what her owners Rebecca Rapple and Michael Barrett think their tennis-ball-obsessed Labradoodle would've wished for.
Endless opportunities for ball chasing and chomping are located in the 3900 block of Northeast Seventh Avenue outside the couple's home after building a community tennis ball library in honor of their 12-year-old dog that died.
Just a few dates into knowing Barrett, Rapple called him up. "I got a puppy," she said.
Rapple played the stereotypical first-time dog owner role, feeding Kaiya mac and cheese off her fork from the dinner table. It was Kaiya's fourth family as a four-month-old puppy.
"Even when we didn't want to play fetch, she had this miraculous ability to go in and find this tennis ball," Barrett said.
As a high-energy, fetch-loving dog, and despite not bringing a ball along for every walk, she'd manage to find one in the wild anyway.
"She used to set them down like basically where the library is and when it was just, you know, a park ball or something, we would leave it there," Rapple said.
Barrett said Kaiya would find the "grossest little tennis balls" left and right, and even more than a year later they still find scavenged balls in their basement.
Some days the items Kaiya collected and left outside for other furry friends stayed, but other times her neighborhood ball-lovers would take them for their own enjoyment.
After a camping trip in California to visit the Redwoods, Kaiya's health rapidly declined and she died about a week later.
"I feel like she had like a really awesome last week," Rapple said, reminiscing on her final days spent digging in the sand, hiking and swimming.
The two had tossed around the idea of having a little book library at one point in time, but it's something their neighborhood is already rich in.
Among numerous ideas of how to honor Kaiya, it hit them: 'Hey, we could do a dog ball library?"
Mulling on their loss, it took about one year before the two took action and brought their vision to life.
Barrett, an architect and owner of HBX Studio, drew a mock up of their library and used primarily scrap materials to put together a post — all they needed to buy was a metal basket to house the balls.
A few weeks of constructing and planning later, it was installed and has been serving passersby and their furry companions for the past year.
The two said not only does it allow Kaiya's memory to stay alive, but seeing the smiles and excitement of those who interact with the library makes them happy.
And their dog, Rhubarb, surely thanks Kaiya for her inspiration now having a copious supply of the same toy that once made her so happy; her wagging tail said it all.
"I think Kaya probably thought that it was just like a bounty from the universe," Barrett said of what Kaiya would think of the tennis ball library.
"She's like, 'Hey, here's this magic basket where there's always tennis ball out of here. Oh, that's the source of dog joy.'"
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