Samanta The Wonder Dog - R.I.P.

I put Sam down on Monday. She was nearly 16 and she was old, but, still…I miss her and wonder if I didn’t just kill my dog because it was too hard for me to watch her slowly die? She fell down the stairs a couple of weeks ago, and frankly, falling head over paws down 12 steps and the off the landing to the floor when you are a 16 year old dog is a life changing event. And for her, it definitely was. She just wasn’t the same after that fall.

 

Still, she would try to follow me upstairs to my office each morning. So, I started putting chairs at the foot of the stairs so she wouldn’t come up. I would go up and sit and my desk and Kenny, the spry Boston Terrier would come up and then we would both sit and listen to Sam nosing the chairs trying to come up.

 

She was the most loyal dog in the world. Since I work from home alone in an office flanked by Sam and Kenny, I dubbed Sam the Chief of Security and Kenny the Chief Operations Office. Sam took her job very seriously. Kenny, on the other hand, just drags his ass on the carpet and chews on his paws. Slacker.

 

Sam, although for the most part by this time, was deaf and blind, she still would lie by my side prepared to attack any one who might come near me. Sure, she was a little slow on the reflexes toward the end and likely would be nipping at the heels of the masked intruder after he bludgeoned me, but at least she was still suiting up and showing up every day, which is more than we can say for Kenny.

 

Don’t get me wrong, Kenny is a great dog. He plays with Max and he is cute a button. But, still, he’s not Sam. Sam kept Kenny in line and walked her beat each day and night. She made sure no one came up to the house unannounced and more than once, on sunny days when we had the house open, caused us to not get mail.

 

I will miss my Samantha. I will miss Max petting Samantha and loving on her, although she had taken to nipping at him a bit. He did not care for that part. It hurt his feelings I think.

 

Sam started out rough, like most dogs do. She took forever to house break and even when she was house broken, at one point she took to pissing in my bed when I was at work. She would somehow pull the covers back, pee in my spot and then somehow put the covers back in place. This meant I would already be sitting in dog urine before I realized the bed was soaked. I never figured out why she did this. It happened maybe 5 times over the course of 4 years. That was plenty enough, thank you.

 

In spite of all that, she was the best and most loyal dog in the world. And I will miss her.

To read my post from last year on Sam and why I loved her so much, click here http://talesfrombelowsealevel.blogspot.com/2008/09/love-letter-to-sam.html