Sam's Tale

This is Sam.

There were several animal shelters in the area, but I wanted to avoid anything associated with the town. I guess I figured that any dog from College Station would treat me the same way as all the people did, namely by completely ignoring me.

I decided to get a dog as a last ditch effort to save myself from myself. I was at point in life where I had just about given up. Not that I would ever kill myself, but I seemed to accept the idea of crawling into a hole and dying. All I did was go to work at a soul crushing job as a lab tech, come home and binge and purge for hours on end to deal with my misery, then fall asleep on the floor feeling worse than when I woke up. So in truth, I was killing myself; I was just taking the slow and painful route rather than a more direct method. I had difficulty finding a point to it all, and I just couldn’t find purpose in myself. I must have had some residual will to live, because I knew that I had to find a reason to get up in the morning or else one day soon would be my last.

I turned to the external for help. I needed someone who needed me. But what value could I be to anyone, and who the hell would have the patience to put up with me? I quickly realized that I couldn’t turn to a person for help and soon found myself searching the internet for a dog. Having a dog would bring purpose to my life. I would have to be there to take care of him, and at last someone would actually need me to stick around.

Like I said, there was no way that I was getting a dog from this town, so my search radius was anything within a hundred miles. If I had to drive 2 hours to get a dog then that’s what I would do. One animal shelter in Coldspring, Texas kept popping up on Petfinder.com, and it seemed to have a lot of dogs that were around the size and kind that I was looking for; about 25 pounds, he had to be a ‘he,’ and he had to be a mutt.

For some odd reason, all of the dogs were listed under breed as “corgi-mix,” even though most of them were clearly not part corgi. If a dog comes up past your knees it isn’t part corgi. Regardless, I looked through them all until I came across one with the unimaginative name of “Blackie.” Obviously, he was black, but he was also the exact size I was looking for and was described as “affectionate” and “house-trained.” It sounded like a winning combination to me, so I called up Coldspring Animal Rescue and asked if Blackie was still available for adoption. With the single word of “yes” I immediately felt a sense of relief. I was certain that I would soon have a loving companion.

Later that same day I went to Petsmart and bought everything that I would need to give Blackie a home. Two hours later and minus $300, I was back in my apartment putting together a kennel and checking that the stuffed squirrel, raccoon, duck, and quail toys all squeaked properly.

The next morning, I made the drive from College Station to Coldspring. Ninety miles of backwoods road across nothing, I had to constantly check my speed. Texas State Troopers have a field day on these types of roads, and they would stop you for just making a lane change without using your signal. I eventually made it to the small town and wound my down a narrow dirt road, hesitantly following the directions I was given. It seemed like an odd place to find an animal shelter, until I made it around the final curve and the place came into view. To call it a shelter was an understatement; it was more like a nature preserve for dogs! There were several, huge fenced-off sections that held between 15 and 20 dogs each, and in the middle of it all was mobilehome up on cinder blocks. As I pulled up, a cacophony of barks, whines, whimpers, and yelps went off, and immediately a grey haired woman emerged from the mobilehome.

I introduced myself, slightly yelling over the noise, and she led me to the area that held Blackie. When I got up to the gate, I was assaulted by a swarm of hyperactive mutts that were determined to lick my face off even if it meant somehow learning to fly. I had a hard time making out one dog from the next, but I clearly didn’t see any black dogs.

“Where’s Blackie?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s over there in the corner doing his own thing.”

Sure enough, sitting apart from the rest of the pack was a medium size black dog, tenaciously gnawing on a bone.

“Hey there guy,” I said in high pitch voice that I use when speaking to animals and small children.

Blackie paused his chewing for a moment, stood up, turned around, and plopped back down again, returning to more important matters.

Rejected. Even from a dog that I just met, it sort of hurt.

“He’s been here so long that he’s kind of gotten used to being here,” the caretaker explained. “Why don’t I show you some of the other dogs?”

Okay, sure, but if that’s the kind of dog that you consider “affectionate” I don’t want to know what you consider “mildly independent.”

At any rate, she introduced me to a couple of other dogs, and they all seemed nice enough. But they just weren’t what I was looking for.

“This is Lady, she’d make a great ‘inside dog’.”

“Yeah, but I kind of wanted a male dog.” (Nothing against females, I just prefer the male temperament, at least in canines. For people, it’s a whole other matter.)

“Oh, here we go. How about Scout? Isn’t he perfect?”

Uh, is he part horse? “He seems a little big for an apartment.” About a hundred pounds too big.

“Chichi?”

No chihuahuas. I want a dog not an overgrown rat.

“Jerry?”

As in geriatric? I mean, I know that old dogs need love too, but I kind of wanted one that would be around for a while.

Thoroughly dejected, I resigned myself to a lonely drive back home.

“Wait, I almost forgot,” the caretaker called me back. “We do have one more, but we have to keep him away from the other dogs. He’s incredibly timid, and he has a tendency to get a little panicky. Wait here, and I’ll see if I can get him to come out.”

Okay, what’s another couple of minutes?

She went around to the side of the mobilehome, and I heard her unlatch a gate. She let out a short “Oh my!” and a black blur sped towards me, kicking up dust like some sort of cartoon. Almost instinctively, I knelt down to catch him, but I didn’t even have to try because he ran right into my arms and began licking my face.

The caretaker caught up to us with a look of absolute shock on her face. “He’s never, and I mean never, done that before. He doesn’t even like it when people approach him.”

I had tears in my eyes, so I kept my head down when I replied, “I think he just picked me.”

At this point he was holding me as much as I was holding him. “What’s his name?” I asked.

“Sam. His name is Sam,” the caretaker answered.

“Let’s go home Sam.”

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For as much as I like to think that I rescued Sam from an unhappy life at a shelter, I know that he has done far more to save me. Although he had some initial difficulties getting over his fear of everything (he was literally afraid of his shadow, and wouldn’t walk with the light behind him at night), Sam has been by side for the past 7 years. We’ve done everything together, and now with the addition of my other dog Jack (and two gerbils), we are a family. Maybe that’s an odd way of putting it, but it suites me just fine. Sam seems to agree.