|
|
|
| |
THIS WAS SAMSON. Before getting Samson I had owned many different breeds of dogs (As well as cats, fish, turtles and even a leach I picked up in a local stream). Well, actually, my parents had owned the animals and I was supposed to take care of them as part of the deal to get them after I did the usual begging and pleading that all children will do.
Samson was my first introduction to collies. I know I know, he's only about 1/3 collie. As far as we could tell he deffinetly had some GSD (German Shepherd Dog) in him. But no matter his pedigree he amazed me in such a way as to change my attitude towards the breed forever.
We got him from a pound in Erie County, Ohio. We had traveled there because my father, rest his loving soul, gave in to the pleads of his loving wife, and admiring son, to have a dog in the house. When we got to the pound my mom's gaze set upon a dog that was already a few years old, but it was lying quietly in it's pen. This would be the perfect dog. It was calm and quiet, but yet it had a clear glint it it's eyes. I later learned that it was a type of hound and knowing my dad, and the noises hounds tend to make, it would've been a bad combination. I, on the other hand, had set my sights on a little fur-ball of a puppy that was in a cage, with about 12 other puppies, next to the gas chamber. He clambered and bounced, using the backs of his littermates to get closer to me, and he stole my heart from that moment. That was in 1976.
He taught me many things as we grew up together. He taught me that being faithful is not the same as being restricted. He taught me that it's ok to be silly more than just once-in-a-while. He taught me that every creature, on God's own Earth, will get mad for one reason or another. And most of all, he taught me that love is the wonderful, and the most painful, emotion of them all.
Then one day I was off to fight the evil communists (Back when they were evil) and while I was away he passed on to the "Rainbow Bridge". That was in 1987.
I will always miss him. But most of all I will always cherish the times we spent together playing, rough-housing or just laying in that warm patch of sunlight as it glinted through the window on a cold December afternoon.
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
