Orginally posted July 9, 2012 –

We took our puppies to the river yesterday and it was a blast. Sammy is a novice swimmer so I was a little worried. We bought a harness to control him but decided to let him off the leash when we got there. He immediately jumped in and headed for the middle of the river. The Bitterroot river is fairly wide and has a strong current. Sammy only weighs 55 pounds and he’s not used to swimming in a strong current, but luckily when I called to him he turned around. He didn’t quite have the hang of taking a break on the shore, so I had to keep pulling him back.

He got really excited about the sticks that Stevo threw, but every now and then he’d head out to the middle again. Once I had to pull on his tail to get him to turn around, and a couple of times I had to grab his harness and haul him to shore. Molly performed like the water dog she is, whimpering excitedly when we threw sticks, then powering out into the current and stealing the sticks from Sammy every time. She’s definitely an Alpha dog! It’s been really hot here the past few days and the river is finally down to a safe water level so I think we’ll be swimming more in the weeks to come. Stevo and I are kind of hermits, so our dogs tend to be hermits too. It’s nice for them to get out in the world once in a while. We have to be careful with Molly, though, as she gets quite protective when she’s on her leash and encountering another dog is always an adventure.

On January 3rd of this year, Sammy was hit by a car on the road in front of our house. It

Nurse Molly keeping an eye on Sammy

was our fault for letting him off his leash but I guess we never thought he’d actually run in front of a moving car. We should have known better. Luckily, he only had a dislocated hip and some contusions, and he has made a full recovery. Amazing, considering it was a Suburban that hit him! The vet was also amazed at how well he recovered, and I attribute a lot of it to a few therapies that Steve did for him:  microcurrent therapy and supplements.

It was a difficult for a couple of months even though his injuries were healing. I slept on the floor with Sammy for the first three nights to make he didn’t stop breathing. Apparently when dogs are hit by cars, one of the big concerns is pneumothorax, where their lungs collapse or bleed. After a few days, I got to sleep in my bed, but I was up every two hours to turn him over. His left hip was sore from being dislocated, and his right hip was sore because he landed on it when the car tossed him up in the air and it was very swollen.

Needless to say, Steve and I didn’t get any sleep and after about three weeks I felt almost psychotic. I swear, I don’t know how new parents do it for a year or more! I also had to take Sammy out three or four times a day for a bathroom break, and we had recently had a two-foot snowfall that subsequently turned into two feet of ice. So just taking care of him took all my time, and of course we still had to do our normal lives and work.

One interesting thing that came out of all this is that Sammy bonded with me a bit more. He’s always been a very independent fellow and still is, but once a day he comes over to me and wants to get on my lap. He’s also very nervous around cars, so we figure he probably won’t run after them anymore. We’re not ready to test that theory, though, so he’s a leash dog all the time now. We figure in another year or so we’ll leave him off leash near the house and see how he does.

So here’s my advice for the day: if your dog won’t come when you call, keep him on the leash.

Originally posted Oct. 14, 2010 –

Meet our new friend Molly! We adopted her from our local shelter on Tuesday. Stevo and I had both, separately, asked Charlie and Black Jack to send us a dog friend for Sammy, and we found Molly just a few weeks later. The funny thing is that she has a lot of the personality traits of both Charlie and Black Jack. She’s a Yellow Lab and Golden Retriever mix, and she’s just the sweetest dog. She’s 5 or 6 years old but looks older because her face has gone prematurely gray. She’s quite willing to chase Sammy around, though, and actually wore him out earlier today. So the pressure is off me and Stevo to entertain!

We got Sammy about 6 months after Black Jack died. I was driving by the Humane Society in Missoula and I just stopped in on a whim to see who was in residence. I

Baby Sammy

looked on their website in the lobby and saw Sammy, and I asked to see him. He was just 3-1/2 months old (see header pic) and I fell in love with him. I asked them to give me a day to bring back my hubby to meet him. The next day, Steve and Charlie both came back to the shelter with me to meet Sammy. At the time, his name was Smitty, and he had been living in a car with a family who had lost their apartment and didn’t have a place to live.

When Sammy met Charlie, he immediately sat in front of the Big Dog and let Charlie be the boss. It was so funny! Then Steve picked Sammy up and he snuggled into Steve’s neck right away. We talked about it for a few minutes, especially whether we were ready to have a puppy. They told us that two other families were waiting to meet Sammy, so we knew if we didn’t take him someone would. Finally, we decided to take a shot. We couldn’t take him home right away because they won’t let a dog out of the shelter unless they are neutered or spayed. We really didn’t want him neutered so young, but we didn’t have a choice. We figured at least if we took him, we’d be able to give him the nutrition he needs to be healthy.

He and Charlie got along well from the start. Charlie taught Sammy how to patrol the back yard, how to chew on sticks, and when to bark at the neighbors. Sammy loved to sit next to Charlie and he would assume whatever pose Charlie was in. They had six months together before Charlie died and I think Sammy really missed him. I’m glad they had some time together and Charlie did a good job of training Sammy to be our protector and companion. Thanks Big Dog!