Friday, August 29, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays Bonus: With Thanks To Brian

Friday, August 29, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: Sam’s BACK!

Sam loved Colorado. Like, a lot. Like, so much that in the month that we’ve been back he’s been noticeably less exciteable in general. Most evenings when we get home he just sorta lays there, looking at us like, "God, you people are boring."

Really, who can blame him? In Colorado he got to go on hikes:

Where he saw - and smelled - gray squirrels and any number of other exciting things that caused his little doggy heart to pound and his ears to perk with excitement:

Even when he was getting almost too tired to keep going, he still didn’t want to go back to the cabin:

He was sad to leave, and it’s shown in his decidedly less-than-enthusiastic behavior over the last few weeks (next week’s post will likely focus more on that). I could tell the moment we got in the car for the 11-hour drive home that he didn’t want to go. Just look at that punim:

I volunteered to take the backseat for the entire return trip to Oklahoma, because I didn’t want my little brother to have to deal with Sam’s antics while he tried to sleep. So, I let Brian drive, I gave up shotgun to my bro for the first time in my life, and I packed, my camera ready to go when Sam got all cute. Mostly, the poor dog, sad to be leaving the Colorado he’d come to love, slept on me. Or under me:

When he wasn’t lying down, he loved to stare out the window. Like me, his favorite bits of scenery were the mostly-flat ones in eastern New Mexico, the Texas Panhandle, and Oklahoma:

All told, I was pretty proud of the way he did on the way back. I’ve been, at times, significantly less proud of his behavior since we’ve returned, but I’ll discuss that more next week.

Friday, August 1, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: Sam Goes to Colorado (Part 1)

We took Sam along on the Great Oklahoma Road Trip to Black Mesa, to see how he traveled. We’d never been in the car with him for longer than it takes to tool around town - friends’ houses, the vet, the dog park. I had really wanted to bring him along to Colorado with us, but I wasn’t really willing to risk a twelve-hour car ride with an ill-behaved or frequently-carsick dog. I thought the five-hour drive out to Kenton would be a good dry run. It was; Sam performed admirably.

So, having passed his audition, Sam got to come along with us to our current locale of Summit County, Colorado. We loaded up in the car last Saturday morning: me, Brian, Sam, and, in the backseat with Sam, my brother, who, for the first leg of the trip, had to share space - and try to nap - with a dog who really, really craves human attention. John’s a car sleeper; ever since he was a little kid, the second a long road trip starts, he’s out like a light. I drove the first half or so of the trip, getting us all the way out to Boise City, Oklahoma, again, before asking Brian to take over. Several times, I’d look in the rearview mirror and see my brother, asleep, Sam’s face RIGHT IN HIS, like, "Um? Hello? Are you okay? Pet me!"

For the last leg, I rode in back with Sam, who was his usual sweet self. If we slowed down or changed speed, he’d look around, waiting for something to happen, but on those long highway stretches he just laid himself down and rode along. That is, until we ended up with a screw in our tire in Commerce City, Colorado, and had to stop at a Wal-Mart to get it fixed. That’s when this happened:

Unlike his fellow passengers, Sam couldn’t have been happier to spend 35 minutes sitting in a Wal-Mart parking lot in a less-than-friendly looking neighborhood in suburban Denver.

Eventually we ended up back on the road, and at our destination, where Sam has had a week of getting to chase gray squirrels around the backyard, hike up long mountain trails, and pester my entire family for affection. He’s been loving it. But that story’s coming next week:

Friday, July 11, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: Sam Hits The Road

So the other big thing that happened this weekend was that Sam got a test. We’re headed up to Colorado for a week later this month, where we’re renting a cabin that is pet friendly. I had really, really wanted to bring Sam along for this vacation, but he’d never spent any prolonged period of time in the car, and given how excited he usually gets when going for a ride, and the fact that our old, stupid vet had told us not to let him get too excited, I was leary.

But, last week, Sam had a checkup, and the doc said that his heart was fine, go ahead, get him excited, let him run and exercise. He’ll love it. That Friday, we were planning to head out to the Panhandle, and we were taking two cars, the Flynns and us, and they were bringing Hera along.* So I figured it was as good a time as any to test Sam out - if things didn’t work, if he didn’t do well on the long trip, at least it was a short one, comparatively. If he did fine, then at least we’d know.

Sam likes the car:

He was very excited to get to go on the trip. He did really well on the drive up. We kept the windows open a crack so that he could stick his nose out and sniff things as we went by them, and he loved this. After awhile, though, it got too hot for anyone in the car to have the windows cracked, and Sam, like a good boy, laid down in the backseat and just rode along.

He did really, really well the whole way up, as did Hera. Both dogs were so excited every time we let them out to go pee that they actually forgot, for quite some time, that they had to go at all. Particularly funny was when we let them out in Boise City, and Hera decided she NEEDED TO SMELL EVERY INCH OF THAT TOWN OMG.

No less hilarious was Sam pulling me and Brian all over creation. When we stopped in Woodward to let the dogs do their business, Hera and Sam dragged us almost a block away before finally going, and even then, they only did it reluctantly, like ,"if I pee, I have to go back in the car! OMG THE CAR!"

When we finally arrived at the Bed and Breakfast, we found it populated with some other dogs for Sam and Hera to befriend. One of them, Angel, was a dalmation who was mostly averse to Sam’s amorous advances, if you know what I mean, and who snapped at him every time he got close. Another, however, was Star, who was just really friendly and sweet:

Aside from their new friends, Hera and Sam were in Dog Heaven at the farm. Not only were there all kinds of new things to smell, it seems that Sam’s dads didn’t feel the need to keep him constantly on the leash while he was there. He had plenty to occupy himself, and spent a lot of time exploring:

We did leave them in our rooms when we went out to the Three-State Marker at night, and anytime we were away from the ranch, so as not to bother our hosts with their care. But Sam seemed to like it all right in our room, too:

The afternoon after our hike to the top of Black Mesa was mostly spent lazing around in the air conditioning. Once the sun started to go down, however, and the heat waned some, Brian and I took Sam for a walk on the nature trail directly behind the B&B. I kept the leash in my pocket, just in case, but Sam was having such a good time and mostly staying close to us, and so I decided we’d let him walk freely. Which is what he did. He mostly stayed close to us at first:

But after awhile he started getting braver:

When he’d get too far away we’d call to him, and he’d come running back, sorta reluctantly, only to whip around and take off in a different direction:

Boy, he sure did like it out there. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Sam happier than those two days we spent at Black Mesa. He was into everything:

When it was time to head back up to the Bunkhouse, we called Sam to come, and he ran ahead of us, where we figured he’d wait patiently while we opened the gate and let him through, like he had before. Something had come over him, though, his indominable dog spirit, I suppose, and my sweet, timid dog went squeezing through the barbed-wire fence. Brian and I shouted, and watched with horror as he made his way through that barbed wire, emerging safe and sound on the other side. We checked him for scratches or injuries, but there were none. He had, however, left a present on the fence:

At some point on the walk, Sam did slow down enough that I could capture this photo, which is going to be framed somewhere in our house in the coming week. I love it so much; how awesome is our little family?

Or perhaps the black and white version?

*I’ve been told to say that, for months, I’ve been misspelling Hera’s name; I’ve been calling her Harrah, which is wrong. It’s Hera, like the wife of Zeus. For that, I apologize, and I offer the following: I’ve searched this site for misspellings and corrected them, and here’s photo of lovely Hera’s lovely face. She, like Sam, was crazy happy the whole time we were in the Panhandle. She and her parents went on to Colorado from there, where I also imagine she had a wonderful time:

Friday, July 4, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: Sam Gets A Checkup

Why is Sam trying so very hard to get into Eley’s, so hard, in fact, that he frightened a couple children who were coming out? Because Sam - Sam is in great health!

I wasn’t happy with our old vet. I found him condescending and unfriendly, and if ever I asked how much something was going to cost, he’d look at me like I was Hitler with a mullet. Then he’d say something snarky, like, "Well, if it saves the dog’s life." Touche, Mr. Vet, but I do have other bills to pay, and anyway, what’s wrong with asking? I ask MY doctor how much things are going to cost. Also, I felt that maybe he was overcharging me a bit.

Turns out I was right, and a couple weeks ago we went searching for ads for new vets. We found a wonderful one who seemed to have opened a brand new office up in Edmond, and so, this past Monday, I took Sam up there.

Turns out that Sam: weighs 55 pounds, peed on the vet’s floor, is now current on his shots, no longer has a heart murmur, and is in wonderful health. Also, he’s wonderful at taking his shots and his medicine, and is just all around the greatest dog ever. Wouldn’t you agree?

Muah!

Friday, June 27, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: WHO WANTS THIS DOG?

Last weekend, we took Sam to the annual Pride Festival in Oklahoma City:

I thought it would be a photo extravaganza, what with Sam being all Pridey. Instead he spent most of the time running up to people and pulling his leash, and the photos of him were not good. Hence the lack of Sam Fridays last week.

We spent a great deal of our time at the Festival near the tent for the Humane Society, who had brought a bunch of dogs in need of homes. So, with this post, I would like to encourage you to adopt a dog. This one, for example, was named Madonna:

And she was just as sweet as could be, and, as you can see, somewhat camera shy.

They all had their little rainbow bandanas on and were so sweet you could almost die. I wanted to take them all home, but we barely have enough room for Sam and the occasional visit from Hera as it is. Bringing another dog into our house at this point wouldn’t really be fair to the new dog, to Sam, or to us.

But YOU? YOU should adopt one of these guys. Like him:

He was old and not able to be very playful, but he was so nice. There’s a special place in Heaven for whoever took him home. Or this guy:

Or this one:

The best dog photo I took at the Pride Festival, however, wasn’t of a dog waiting on you to adopt her. It was this photo, of Standard Poodles, a breed of dog I’d never dream of owning. But this photo just makes me smile:

Friday, June 13, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: Can You Find Sam In These Pictures?

Can you find Sam in the photos below?

Okay, that last one was a gimme. But still. That dog’s a chameleon, sometimes. Or, at least, not remotely interested in having his photo taken.

Friday, June 6, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: Experimental Sam

Last week I addressed a comment by reader TKG, who suggested that Sam was whining at night because he wanted to sleep in the bedroom with us. At the time I dismissed this suggestion out of hand, saying, oh, no, he stinks, he smells bad, he’d keep us up, it’s never gonna happen.

Well. Almost the minute I posted that I began to wonder to myself what the hell I was thinking. Sam does smell bad when he’s got his long winter coat, but since we gave him his summer haircut the only thing that stinks about him is his breath. OH AND IT DOES. And anyway, I wondered, how could a smell keep us up any worse than the whining?

Anyway, I thought that we at least owed it to Sam and to ourselves to give it a try. I washed a blanket that he’d been sleeping on and we folded it up at the foot of our bed, left the door open at night, and sure enough, at bedtime he followed us up. He won’t go in the bedroom unless we’re in there; he doesn’t like to climb those stairs. But it’s become one of his favorite habits to lay at the foot of our bed every night while we lay there before sleep, me reading, usually, and Brian playing his Nintendo DS.

He’s up and down all night, and I’m vaguely aware of it as I’m a light sleeper in the summertime. What’s funny is that he’ll usually come upstairs with us and lay down, but when we get up in the morning he’s back down in the office like usual. But there was no whining, there were no late-night pleas for attention or requests to go out. In general, it’s been an entirely positive experience. So, I can freely admit here that I was wrong. LOOK AT ME LEARNING AND GROWING.

I did notice a few disturbing behaviors that first night. Our upstairs bathroom has no door, and once in the middle of the night I woke up to the sound of Sam drinking out of the toilet. My bad for not putting the lid down. AHA! I thought. That’s why he puked on the floor that one time I let him roam the house while I was at work!

So - I tried another experiment. Leaving for work the next morning, I made sure all toilet lids were down, all appealing dirty dishes and edible trash were out of reach, and the doors to the bedroom and bathrooms were closed, but I didn’t shut Sam up in the office. And he’s done great!

So - thanks to TKG and my own begrudging willingness to admit when I’m being a moron, Sam’s now got a lot more freedom and his separation anxiety seems to have largely vanished. Now, he’ll even go in the bedroom when we’re not there. No, here’s proof!

Oh, also, last week I bought him a new bandana. Whaddaya think?

Friday, May 30, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: Q&A

You guys were so awesome last week. This is what I love about blogging; I can put my problems out there and get actual solutions and support. It’s wonderful.

Here’s a picture of Sam, listening to the new Cyndi Lauper album:

A couple people commented on last week’s post with a couple helpful suggestions/questions. And like any good religion and philosophy major, I’m going to mostly answer your questions with more questions.

My good friend Ryan said this:

He actually has one. Last summer he dug up one of the beautiful hydrangeas right outside our sun room, an infraction for which he received no punishment, as I figured - he’s a dog. He’s going to dig. So I let him dig there. We did have a mishap with that plan this year, as it seemed Sam had lost interest in the plot and I put a flower pot in it. He immediately went and started digging in the garden. I took the flower pot away, and while Sam showed no further interest in the little hydrangea bed, at least it stopped him digging in the garden. Which leads to Paddy’s comment:

A dog run is a good idea; I’m going to look into that. The garden is fenced off, but the fencing is very short, as I think anything much taller would block off the limited light my little vegetable patch already gets. As it is, Sam’s really good about staying out of there. The other day - this is too cute not to share - he was walking on the pathway that leads around the garden, and for a second he lifted his foot and held it over the boundary of the vegetable patch, let it hover there for a second, and then set it back down outside the boundary. You could see the wheels turning in his head - "Oh, wait, this is not a good idea." He’s really, really smart about staying out of there. Mostly.

As for the whining at night, well, the dog has separation anxiety. He just does, and I’m not sure what to do about it, which is where you guys come in. Reader TKG had this to say:

We’ve thought about letting Sam sleep in the bedroom, but the simple, shallow fact is that he’s a very stinky dog. He gets regular baths and haircuts and is mostly an indoor dog, but nothing seems to eliminate the fact that our dog smells bad and my husband has a superhuman sense of smell that wouldn’t let him sleep anywhere within 10 feet of Sam’s enchanting musk. As for the spanking thing - that’s literally the third time he’s gotten spanked. It doesn’t happen often, and it’s never very hard.

Also, TKG, I figured you out. Good to "see" you.

Friday, May 23, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: Sam Has A Bad Week

No photos today; just a story.

Sam’s been doing really well, and so on Monday I thought I’d let him wander around the house on his own while Brian and I were at work. He did fine; no destruction, no terror, just fine.

That night he started whining when we shut him up in his room, and it took me forever to get to sleep. I had to go tell him to be quiet five or six times before I finally nodded off, but he started up again at 12:30, waking me from much-needed slumber. I listened to him whine, I told him to shut up, and then as I listened to him I realized he was pacing. It almost sounded like someone doing the pee-pee dance.

So, I got up and let him out, hoping this wouldn’t become a pattern. He immediately went out and did his business, then came back in and was quiet long enough for me to get to sleep. Except I couldn’t sleep; here it was 1:30 by this time and it was hot in the bedroom and damn it all if I was WIDE AWAKE. So I went downstairs, turned on a light and finished reading the book I’d been working on.

At about 4 I went back up to bed and got back to sleep for a few minutes when Sam started whining again. This time I figured I’d created a monster, that he’d figured out that if he whines in the middle of the night that he gets to go outside. I went down and told him to SHUT.THE.FUCK.UP and went back to bed.

The next morning I opened his door to let him out and was greeted with a foul, sweet odor, like something from Jonestown. Sam had puked on the floor.

"Aw, shit, Sam," I said. "I’m sorry." I let him out and cleaned up the pool of sick, which had left a massive stain on the hardwood floor. I went out to check on him, and he seemed fine; he wanted to play with his toy and was running around like nothing was wrong. I felt awful for ignoring his cries for help, and I decided we’d never let him roam the house on his own again, as he’d clearly gotten into - something. I never did figure out what. He slept fine the rest of the week, not whining once when we put him in his room for bedtime.

Then.

Last night Brian and I were watching the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy (ha ha, shut up). Sam was lying on the floor next to the sofa and then got up and began to pace back and forth, occasionally putting his head in our laps. This usually means he needs to go out.

Brian got up to let Sam out and then came back inside, opting to let Sam run around for awhile in the backyard. This makes me nervous, but I said nothing about it, because I didn’t want to be that guy. After 10 minutes or so I got up to let Sam back in.

When I turned on the light on the back porch, the first thing I heard was something rattling - one of my pots on the stone pathway around the yard. Sam came running from that direction.

"What are you doing?" I asked him. He didn’t look up at me.

I ran over to the pots. Even in the dark I could see all was not well; Sam had turned 3 of them over and almost completely emptied the dirt out of one.

Then, I lost my mind. I ran back inside where Sam was cowering, hiding from me; he knew he’d done something wrong. Something snapped inside me; I lost my temper and screamed at him as loud and powerfully as I knew how: "BAD DOG!"

I took one deep breath while Sam tried to run away from me. He got stuck in between some of the patio furniture and trapped, and I caught him. I spanked him twice, and he cried out. I felt like a monster, my rage and disappointment and discouragement welling up in me. I took a step back from him and then ushered him into the house. He ran into his room and curled up in a ball on the sofa.

Brian, hearing the commotion, asked me what was wrong. I was seeing dots by this time, gritting my teeth so tightly together that I was barely able to see. I felt awful that I’d lost my temper, even though I hadn’t spanked Sam very hard. I was blinded - almost literally - by rage.

It’s just so damn discouraging when something that you love as much as I love Sam destroys something you’ve worked really, really hard on. Just that same day I’d had a problem with birds pulling up 10 of my container plants - just pulled them right up out of their pots and then set them back down, dead, as if to mock me. I was already frustrated with the garden and with myself, and to have Sam throw his brand of chaos into that mix created the perfect storm.

I sulked on the couch for awhile, then instructed Brian that on no terms are we to leave Sam in the backyard alone with the plants. He’s dug them up now one too many times, I said, and he can’t be trusted. We can’t just leave him out there to go - we watch, we wait, and we let him back in. I hate to do that; Sam likes the backyard and is usually well-behaved. But I’ve worked too hard on that garden to let him ruin it.

We finished watching Grey’s and I started to feel better. I got up, went in Sam’s room and called him to me. He came, and I sat on the couch with him for awhile, petting him. He lay his head on my lap and licked my hands every time I stopped. Brian came in to check on me; I was feeling discouraged, less by the loss of my plants than by my own awful behavior. I absolutely can not imagine what it’s like to be a parent.

Sam finally forgave me and returned to his jovial self. I went upstairs and lay awake after turning off the light, praying for the grace to forgive myself for being such a horrible steward for Sam, this gentle - and slightly stupid - creature I’ve been given to take care of. It’s amazing that the things you love the most somehow seem to magically acquire the ability to push your worst buttons.