We have adopted! This, here is Sammy!

Our family has a new addition!  Yesterday we adopted a new family member! His name is Sammy!  Sam-I-am!  Sammy-George.  I think he has a Snoopy-face!  It’s been nearly 2 and a half years since Skittles went to doggy heaven. She was a Cairn and maybe poodle mix.  Also a pound adoption.  She was named for her manner of being so skittish when we first found her.  Her middle name was Pepperoni, as that is what we resorted to, for getting her to come over to the fence so we could pet her.  She was a sweet-natured dog, but we believe she was badly abused prior to ending up in the pound.  Sammy came from an overcrowded home with too many dogs in one place, and landed in an overcrowded euthanizing shelter.  He was there a week or more.  From there he was rescued by the SPCA, and given the works as to healthcare and flea treatment, including that snippy bit of surgery they all have to have.  HE rode in a car with several other dogs to the Pet Store where we met him, so he’d been through the ringer.  We figure he is a mix of Bassett,  Ductchhound, with some Kairn in there someplace, judging by the others in the litter and by his features.  He’s got the Bassett feet.  His ears are bigger than a Cairn’s and a Dutchounds, but not as long as a Bassett.  I was sort of hoping his bark would be the Bassett bark.  That low, drawn-out Southern way of dog-speaking: WhauOoooof!    But he sounds about like Skittles did, just in a lower octave.  Quite a manly bark.

He is a good dog!  Definitely got that Bassett nose for exploring and sniffing around.   We’ve not had a mouse in the house for a lot of years, but I dare say if one were to make its way inside now, it won’t last long.  Don’t tell my kids, but after this guy’s had a chance to come fully out of his shell and get comfy, I’m considering adopting a tuxedo kitty.  I had one once and she was something else!  Sweet, with the usual cat trait of take-you-or-leave-you-depending-on-my-mood, but when I was sick she never left my side.  She learned to rattle the back door knob when she wanted to go out or come back in.  First time I heard it, it scared me.  I thought someone was coming in after me, but there she was, just letting me know she would like to come in, please!  Of course,  we had the Shih-Tzu then, and he followed her around like a little man in love.  Didn’t know the implications of their differences, if you take my meaning, but only knew he was smitten-in-love!  She had an actual cat-boyfriend already though.  His name  was Walter.  Walter ruled the turf around the block.  We live in an area  heavily-populated with  neighbors of the cat-nationality.  Walter clearly was king, judging by the way the other cats gave him a wide berth, never looked him straight in the eye, and addressed him as “Himself”.  There were also the cuts and scrapes he always wore like badges.  Ruled with an iron paw, that guy did!  But “Miss Priss” never got a scrape on her.  My having not much experience or knowledge of animals, my husband was the one that pointed out to me she was Walter’s Lady-friend and all.  As such, she enjoyed the special privileges and protections of his jealousy.  As Skittles got older and couldn’t abide the ruckus and antics of the cat and the Shi-Tzu Higgins, we ended up placing both Rascal and Higgins into a new home with a mom who is a veterinarian, and two daughters who had lost their own beloved Shih-Tzu to a selfish dad in the parents divorce.  It worked out well in the end, because Higgins was a lotta dog, and since Skittles had first dibs, it was only fair she love out her last remaining couple of years in un-harassed peace.  When I listed the dog and cat, I prayed the Lord would see to it they ended up in the right homes, and I specifically prayed that we’d know who was the right ones because they would want to take them both.  I got lots of inquiries on the Shih-Tzu, but I didn’t get good vibes about anyone until this young lady about 18 or 19, called.  She sounded hopeful, excited, and a little nervous.  When she told me the story of her dad leaving them and taking the Shih-Tzu, and that her mom had said they couldn’t afford to buy another Shih-Tzu, but that if they could find one to adopt, then she would allow them to get it, well, I knew that they would love him and take good care of him.  She then mentioned that her mom is a veterinarian!  One of the things we learned with Higgins was if you are going to have a Shih-Tzu, and you want that longish, silky coat as opposed to a short haircut, you were going to need to be able to do the extensive grooming yourself or pay often for having it done.  A vet would likely have the facilities right there in her office for doing that!  We had set a modest re-homing fee to weed out breeders or people who might have no idea what they were getting into, adopt and then find the care of a pet was more than they bargained for.  Well, the girl and I chatted amiably, and it was clear she was so very hopeful, and just as she was about to end the call, she said, “Oh, Wait!  I can’t believe I almost forgot to ask you!  Is the cat still available?  My mom really wants her!   I closed my eyes and just felt a tingle in my belly, lol.  I said, “Lord, thank you”, and knew without a doubt that we wouldn’t have to worry about their welfare.  She called back later and asked if she could pay part of the fee now, and the rest in a couple of days, but go ahead and pick them up in the next couple of days.  That was fine with us, and of course we told her not to worry about the fee once she came to get them.  She insisted on giving us the part she already had with her though.

We stayed in touch for a  while, until my cell phone number changed, but we know we can find them in the County where they lived by searching her mom’s name under the Veterinarians.

Even the short year or so we had the Tux and the Shih-Tzu, we retained a lot of warm and funny memories that we re-tell from time to time.  Higgins had that squashed-nose and whenever he got worked up, he wheezed like a freight-train.  When we first brought him home, it worried us at first.  He was so excited it took him a good hour and a half to breathe normally again.  He wasn’t “fixed” yet and he loved nothing more than to roll right over on his back and show the whole world “what he had” and like most male dogs, the area was of great personal fascination for him, and every new person he met, he seemed to reckon they, every one, surely wanted to see the display for themselves, and so they did!  But his most impressive trick was teleportation!  The first time it happened, I was pretty stunned, I’ll tell you!  For a dog that breathed like Darth Vader on speed, who shot around the house like a ball-bearing in a pinball machine, it was down-right boggling, to walk out of one room, leaving him sit there, only to find him sitting there waiting for you in the other room.   How a dog that clumsy and noisy could slip underfoot without alerting you to his presence, is one trick of his we never did figure out.  It happened with me first, and no one believed me on account of my near-deafness.  But then it happened, one by one, with all the others and so that went down in family lore.  When the gal came to pick them both up to go to their new home, I told her about this special talent Higgins has.  She laughed, but a week later I got a call.  “Oh MY GOODNESS, you’re RIGHT!  He does teleport!  I thought you were just being funny, but it’s just crazy!  I left him in the living room, and yet when I walked into the bedroom, there he was!  HOW does he DO that????”  I said, well, it’s a mystery and his own special thing”.  We never did figure it out.

Rascal loved music, and would sing along.  She had a bit of a Siamese voice about her.  Once first thing in  the morning, Garrett and I were in the kitchen getting the coffee on and talking, and she wandered in by the food bowl and started to meow.  I ignored her.  (Cats will not be ignored).  She meowed louder.  I didn’t pay attention, since I was the one speaking, but I did have to talk a little louder.  Before long, though, I realized I was practically shouting in order to hear my own self over her racket”.  I gave her a good talking-to and made her wait a little longer just to keep her from getting the idea she was actually in charge.  Didn’t matter though, nothing gets that idea out of their head.  She never shredded the upholstery or anything like that.  She was an in/out cat so I wasn’t about to declaw her.  I used a spray water-bottle on her anytime she started to, and I made sure she had a scratching pad and we did fine.  Her favorite thing was when the Christmas tree went up.  She never tried to climb it like a lot of cats do.  She just loved to lay under it looking up into the lights.  She never batted at the ornaments.  She’s a good kitty and the Vet who has her now loves her to pieces.  Higgins is “everyman’s dog”.  Wit us he travelled to West Virginia, and to Pennsylvania.  We understand that with his new family he has travelled to California and Florida and a few other places.  A dog on the move!  He never met a stranger and was always very happy.  HE wasn’t one to grieve.  But we were happy that He prevailed over Walter as companion for Rascal.

Walter, on the other hand, made it a point to march right over every time we came out of our house, and give us some “what for” over the fact his woman had disappeared and he knew we were behind it.  I don’t speak cat, but I’m pretty sure if I could have, he’d have sounded like Italian Mafioso.  Something about thumbs and his not having any had no bearing on what he’d like to do to ours.  He did that right up until the time his family moved away and took him with them.  Thank goodness.  The hostility was a little stressful.

Sammy is about the age Skittles was when we got her.  Two years old-ish.  He so far has not gotten very animated.  Might be the Bassett in him,, but with all he’s been through in the last ten to 14 days, we figure he is a little traumatized and grieving.  This morning he is already better than yesterday.  He’s been out for an early morning walk in the brisk Fall air, and met one of the neighbor dogs, whose owner doesn’t bother with leashes or even accompanying his dog on his morning walks.  Just opens the door and shoo’s him out.  All 70 pounds of him.  We will be challenged to keep Sammy from learning bad habits from him.

No doubt this will only be the first of the Sammy stories!  My husband is the quiet and introverted type.  He also has that mysterious way with animals.  He used to work on a pig farm, and every once in a while he’d have to climb over in the pen with Big Gus, to access some area of the barnyard.  Gus was a six hundred pound boar.  Gus wouldn’t hurt him, but he could definitely be an impediment to whatever Garrett had to do, and so, as Garrett tells it, he’d just scratch old Gus behind the ear for a few minutes, and the old fellow would fall right over on his side, asleep.  Problem solved!

I call him the pig-whisperer.