Misty, 15
Chris Karabin, 51: We live in Wilton, Connecticut, about an hour outside New York City. When we get out of the car at Stone Harbor, Misty goes right to the beach. She jumps into the waves and out and back and forth. She’s also highly affectionate with people and sort of nonchalant with other dogs. She’ll go up to someone sitting on a chair and say hi to them. She’s very empathetic, if you can say that about a Gordon setter. She also loves snooping around the ocean and smelling things. She has an extraordinary desire to roll around in things—like a dead horseshoe crab or a fish or something.
I’ve been coming to the Shore since I was six. My folks bought the place in Stone Harbor around 1965 or so. It’s a bit of a hike coming down from Connecticut, but we come down for a long weekend, take a couple of weeks in early summer and then fall. I work at Deloitte, one of the Big Four accounting firms. I’m on the sales side, so I’m handling responsible for a couple accounts globally for Deloitte, specifically Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. We particularly like September and October at the Shore—those are just wonderful times. It’s less crowded and Misty can walk on the beach, as opposed to summertime when there are restrictions. It’s sort of amazing—even in the wintertime she doesn’t hesitate to go into the water. Her tolerance for cold is a lot better than mine.
On the Connecticut shore, there’s just a lot of rocks and stuff. You don’t have these long barrier beach islands of beautiful sand. The Jersey Shore is a completely different experience. You’re way out in the open. For somebody like Misty, there’s just no comparison: the freedom, the openness, the miles and miles of beautiful beach. In Connecticut, people tend to think of going north toward Martha’s Vineyard or something. There’s not much understanding of just how beautiful the Jersey Shore is, which is actually not such a bad thing. But we have exposed quite a few people to the Shore, and a few have even bought places down here.