One of a Kind

One warm fall afternoon, I went out to get the mail. As I looked down the street, I saw a little puppy running right down the center of Waterloo road. With the traffic that comes down this main road,  I knew if I didn’t do something he was going to get hit by a car.  After calling to him, he turned around, took one look at me and ran as hard as he could and jumped right into my arms!

I tried for 10 days to track down the owner and finally decided to call the school across the street from my home to ask them if they would find out if anyone was missing a puppy.  Sure enough, that evening a man and a little girl came to the house and discovered that it was their pup.  Within three hours of them taking him home, he was right back here.  I hadn’t asked where they lived,  so I couldn’t take him back to them. Finally, after two weeks had passed, they came to get him.  Once again, within a couple hours he was back here.  This time I knew where they lived so I took the little guy with me and asked if I could keep him.  The man informed me that a dog is a free spirit and chose where he wanted to live, and when he got tired of us he would come back to them.  Well, he didn’t tire of us because he was with us for 18 and a half year! Sam was a Dachshund-Yorkie mix and was Personality personified.

I do not allow my dogs to interact with the wildlife, but when they are puppies and I get baby animals, I make the new puppy sit by me when I am feeding the babies; it is important that they learn they are not allowed to harm them.  Sam loved to watch the babies when I would feed them and he always seemed to have a big interest in baby opossum.  I sometimes wonder if it was because of the tisking sound they made when calling for their mother.

One afternoon, I was feeding baby opossum when I heard a knock on the door.  The babies were not big enough to get out of the container I had them in and I knew none of the other animals would bother them, so I just set the container on the floor.  I signed in the animal that the person brought and came back to the baby opossum to finish feeding them, but the opossum were GONE, EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM!  I went on a hunt throughout the house and what I found was Sam sound asleep with all the babies on him.  The only way they could have gotten out was with his help.  My guess is that they thought he was Mom because of the texture of his hair.  You can bet that never happened again!

Memories are special experiences that we never forget and this was one of them. Sam passed away in 2001 and we still miss him. ~ Fran

Copyright 2016-2018  Fran Kitchen

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