My Name Is Sam. Sam I am

The first fall after our arrival, we decided to sell stuff at a permanent flea market “in town.” Okay, now I will admit, coming from a very big city, this is not a term I would have ever thought I would use. This word is something I would hear on Bonanza or some such TV show. But, still, any store you would have to travel to for anything was “in town.” And that, as you would expect, was pretty much everything. Oh, there was this dinky little store in “downtown” Josephine, but the idea of paying $5.00 (this was in 1994, remember) for a dozen for eggs was just too much for me to bear.

Well, we opened up shop in a city just north of Dallas. Of course, since it’s a flea market where most folks selling are not professionals, we had a lot of competition for the same types of items. As a result, we didn’t exactly turn much profit. In fact, we often barely made our rent payment.

But, all was not in vain. A few doors down from our booth was a couple selling puppies. Okay, I don’t approve of puppy mills, but Pat, being a sucker for animals of all sorts (I was still not convinced I was animal person. Patience dear reader. My being sucked in will become obvious as this blog continues), had to check it out. This went on a couple of months, till one day in the spring she came back to our booth with a puppy. The dog, I will admit, was cute as a button. I noted that he had large feet. I thought that just meant he was healthy. What did I know? Pat just smiled and handed him to me. Pat said he’s a catahoula, which is a breed raised to herd wild pigs. She said he looked up at her and said “My name is Sam.” I’d been with Pat long enough by now to know she was about as close to “Dr Doolittle” as I was ever going to come, so I didn’t even raise an eyebrow. I just patted the little fella on the head and welcomed him home, since I knew it was pointless to argue.

We came home with Sam, not knowing exactly what catahoula’s were like. Mind you, Pat knows more about canines than anyone I know, but even she didn’t know as much about that breed as she should have. For example, Sam had his own yard to himself, a pretty good-sized section of land we’d fenced off just for him. But we didn’t realize Catahoua’s, for all their size, were scared of their own shadows. When he saw a rock in the yard that he hadn’t seen before, we had to move it out of his sight or we would not get a chance to have a decent conversation in our house. He barked and whimpered at that rock until it walked out of his line of vision.Well, the yard didn’t turn out just for him. But more about the other denizens of that yard as we go forward.

The first fall after Sam was spending most of his day in the yard, after many trees had fallen bared by nature, Sam started barking and barking. Sam had a very shrill bark for a 60 pound dog; the kind of shrill that tore through your bones and bored into your brain. It did to me kinda like I imagined that insect that Khan did to the crew of The Enterprise in the second Star Trek movie. At least it had much the same effect. This barking went on for what seemed like days. Then we figured it out. And it wasn’t something we could easily move from Sam’s line of sight.

What Sam was carrying on about was a couple of fields over there was a horse standing in a pasture. During sunny days it was keeping warm by just standing still, letting the suns rays caress him. We were more than sure that the horse did this very often, but now that there were no leaves on the trees blocking Sam’s view, he could see the horse. And it was something different. Catahoula’s don’t like anything new and different, and to him the horse was invading his territory. Hence he barked…and barked…and so forth. By early February we were praying for spring and leaves.

As time went on we got one more dog from the puppy-mill people, Chevy. I gave her that name since she was a treeing walker fox hound (okay, let’s just pretend these dogs are pure-bred). When she was just weaned, as all of the animals this couple were selling were, she had round markings just above each eye that, to me, a creature of the city, looked like headlights. Hey . . . You find your metaphors where you can. Hence, the dog became known as Chevy. Very sweet, and the perfect companion for Sam. She kept him in his place, even after they were both “fixed.”

If I may digress for a moment (did I just hear someone sarcastically say “what a novel concept?” And hey, did the words “oh, here we go again” just pass my ears?), why do they call having an animal rendered incapable of making or having little animals of their kind “fixed?” I mean, if a child removes the wheels off its new wagon, you would say the child broke it. So why not call the practice of removing an animals sex organs breaking it? Now please understand this does not in any way mean I am against cutting an animal. Ultimately it’s the best thing for all concerned; the animal is healthier, lives longer, doesn’t have babies that may wind up being euthanized through no fault of the animal’s, and most of the time a better pet for it. But still, one has to wonder about the “code words”.

I mentioned that Chevy was the queen of the yard Sam and her shared. Chevy would more often than not steal Sam’s toys and horde them. Not sure why she did that, other than because she could. No, Chevy didn’t play with those toys. She just took them from Sam and kept them from him.

Then came Hershey and Taffy, our two chihuahuas More about them in my next installment. Until then, dear reader, have a great week. And keep smiling. Makes them wonder what you’re up to.

This entry was posted on 8. January 2010 at 04:36 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.