As I mentioned in my introduction, Sam came to us from a shelter in Wichita, KS. His group had been put down, and they had somehow missed him, and although all his paperwork had also been destroyed they let us take him home. We often joked that he had been 'in the pen' because he had killed his previous family in their sleep.
Sam was the most amazing dog. Much to my husband's disgust, the labrador blood in his past had somehow filtered out the 'fetching' gene and apart from one afternoon where he retrieved a ball at least a dozen times, fetching was a game he thought beneath him. He preferred - supervision. It didn't matter the activity - something quiet, or something noisy and dangerous like chopping wood - there he would be, lying calming nearby, his front feet crossed, supervising. Perhaps he was a council worker in a previous life?
The boys love to hear our 'Sam stories'. There are many of them. Other dogs, apparently, could tell that he'd done time 'in the pen' and would often give him a wide berth. Despite being nearly the same height as the whippets (ie not very tall) he weighed around 80lbs. He mostly resembled a pot bellied big. But he was as sweet as you could ever ask for, and didn't mind the constant influx of strange new creatures into his life. Holly used him as a chew toy when she was a puppy. Agnes bit his back legs on a daily basis. Even the puppy we puppy-sat for six months while her mom was finishing school abused him. But apart from an occasional growl, which you knew he didn't mean too seriously, he let them have his way with him.
Sam did have one trait that always amazed us. He understood the meaning of 'back around'. When he was out on a leash and inadvertantly went around the other side of a tree to you, you'd tell him 'back around' and he would untangle himself and on we would go. Not even my sister-in-law's obedience trained golden retrievers ever managed that feat.
Apart from supervision, Sam's other vocation was defence. That certainly wasn't why we got him from the shelter, and it wasn't something obvious, but every so often, there he would be, keeping us safe from harm.
When Scott was little - small enough to be in a sling on Darren's chest - we all went for a walk and the crazy german shepherd from the house of the corner came running at us. And there were Scott's feet, dangling enticingly down Darren's front. Sam, however, was having none of this. He charged in front of Darren, and literally knocked Skeeter back across the street, and stayed between us until we had cleared the end of the street. Then, his job done, he happily joined us on our walk.
Another time, when I was walking with Sam and Holly past the edge of town (the town we lived in in Kansas had a creek that ran diagonally through it, with a walking path - the first half mile from our house were shops and houses, but after that it gave way to fields and eventually a baseball diamond, so the dogs walked off leash a lot) and a gentleman coming towards me commented that my 'guard dogs' were quite a way back. I replied that they were close enough and when Sam passed the man, instead of just ignoring him, he circled off the path a little and growled. Which was not something Sam generally did, and made me wonder what he knew that I didn't.
Sam got to defend Holly quite a bit, most memorably from the chows at the end of the street, who had her cornered one day. We could hear her whimpering and Sam went off to investigate, once again putting himself between her and trouble. Of course, now that she was feeling safe, Holly would then prance around behind Sam, horrible show off that she was.
Sam always knew when he had done something bad. We would get home and he would run to greet us, and then immediately take himself into the back yard, where he would sit like the loneliest dog in the world. It was a clear hint that he had done something (he would pee in the house from time to time) and we would go looking for whatever mischief he had been up to. One day, seeing a puddle in the hallway, I yelled at him and he looked at me as if to say 'Hey, wasn't me!' I cleaned it up, and a while later came by to find yet another puddle. Sam still protested his innocence. After the third time I discovered one of the kids had left a popsicle on the bookcase in the hallway, and it was melting and dripping and making a mess. Sam, to his credit, knew that this particular mess wasn't his fault at all.
As he got older, the labrador in his breeding showed itself in hip problems. One of the reasons we got Agnes was to be company for Holly when Sam died. I believe Sam took this as a challenge, for despite having some really bad times, he lived another five years. We think he was around two when we got him, which means he lived to the ripe old age of 13.
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