Sammy

The call came the day after we lost Rosie. The caller wasn’t even aware. Knowing we had lost Shadow a few months earlier she thought she’d take a shot at seeing if we were open to adding a third. I stopped her short, explaining our most recent situation. It was a lot to take—and once the situation was fully explained it would have been easy to give a pleasant. ‘Thanks but this is really not a good time’.  But we’re soft for a good animal story. 

Bounced around between four families in fewer than seven months is enough to scar many pups for awhile. Not this one; quite the opposite according to my friend. In fact, Sammy was so oblivious to her plight it was serving as a major contributor to her situation. She expressed her joy with people on a regular basis—and with new people in an over the top manner. A rapidly growing, bounding, jumping, water loving, nipping, running, bouncing mix of Lab and Shepard. Surely she was portrait-cute up through two-three months till she found her legs and hit her growth spurt. At one point a family even put her on Craigslist just to get rid of her.

A bounding seven month old terror was not exactly what we had in mind after the past six months of nursing aged, sickly pups. A little peace sounded like a good recipe. However, with Walter showing signs of withdrawal after losing Shadow we were unsure how he was going to handle losing Rosie so soon. He’s an old guy himself and changes such as these surely couldn’t be good for him. 

Fast forward several conversations, even more photos and videos, a few weeks and a long drive through the desert to the California border and Samantha was ours. And oh, my what an opening she gave. 

Sick from spending a bit of time in a kennel while her foster’s were away, exuberant at the sight of new people and Walter, overheating from the brutal desert heat and on top of that acquiring an eye infection within four hours of our checking into the hotel. After a bunch of research and a few sweeps through drug stores we settled down the eye issue (we think almonds) and were ready to call it a night. 

Naturally the next several days/couple of weeks have been a rollar coaster, largely because of the inevitable revolving door of people and pets in and out of the house. 

A near terror by herself, Sammy’s been a trooper by meeting and greeting five additional pups within her first three weeks home. She’s on top of her game when she can mix it up with others (human or canine) so she’s already into her third week of training class to channel her inner chaos into something tolerable–to humans and canines.  

What a great step we took—-Sammy’s got the best of both breeds–sharpness of the Shepard and exuberance of the Lab. It’s easy to see how she grew to be too much for some of the families who thought they were getting a sweet, mindful, dopey Lab. Probably none of them bargained for the effort needed to channel her above average intelligence. She’ll be a ton of work over the next year and in return she’ll give back a lifetime of memories. We love our animals. Everyone wins.