Remembering Samantha Pup

When I met Samantha Scaredycat, the mother of Queen Cat Serena, I wanted to change her name, but she wouldn't let me. I had already known two memorable pets called Samantha: a seventeen-year-old cat with whom our Founding Queen Black Magic used to sniff noses in a friendly way, and, even before that, Samantha Pup, who belonged to a family for which I used to baby-sit.

The children wanted a dog. The parents didn't want a specific breed. They wanted a cute, clever, trainable , lovable puppy who would grow up with their three young children. What they got was Samantha, whose ancestors probably included spaniels, hounds, retrievers, and possibly Chihuahuas, going by her looks. They could hardly have done better in the cute, clever, trainable, or lovable categories. When I think of "a small cute dog who makes a good house pet," what comes to mind is Samantha Pup.

She really was a year-old puppy when I met her. Her coat was soft, combable, but not long and shaggy, black all over with a little white patch on her chest like a "tuxie" cat. Underneath, where the hair was thinner, her skin was pink. Her ears were short but floppy and furry. Her head was small; her build was slim; her tail was plumy and waggable. She was a quiet dog who seldom barked, never growled or howled, and rarely whined. Once in a while, while scampering and playing, she let out a quiet, ladylike, joyful yip. She liked to be held, groomed, or petted, and loved to have her underside tickled. She answered to her name, would catch treats in midair but didn't beg or tease for extra treats if she was with humans who were eating, and seemed to understand words like "sit on the floorboards in the car" without having to be taught special commands. 

Without losing her sense of duty to the eldest of the three children, Samantha also made it clear that I was one of her favorite humans. When I baby-sat, visited, or walked past the house she always came out, not to jump up at me--she was too polite for that--but to put herself within petting-and-tickling range. She hardly took time to sniff my hand before running under it for a back scratching, and then rolled over to encourage tickling.

With tremendous grace and charm Samantha seemed to recognize when the children were teaching her something adults preferred that she not learn. 

That first year, they read about retrievers fetching wounded ducks and thought it would be fun to teach Samantha to retrieve. Their grandmother had given them one fledgling bantam chicken per child as a pet. My brother passed by their house and found the children throwing their chickens about for Samantha to chase. Samantha really was catching the chickens in a "soft mouth" grip and bringing them back to the children, but one of the birds had already been picked up by a wing, was unable to use that wing, and would die later that day. A few years earlier, on a similar occasion, my brother had knocked down the careless children and commandeered the pet chicken. By now he was a big boy, almost twelve years old, with money in his pocket from baby-sitting, so he whipped out some money and bought the undamaged bantam. He scolded Samantha for "touching chickens." Samantha whined as if to say "I'm sorry, I'll not do that again--unless my humans tell me to," but although she left chickens alone when not ordered to catch them, nothing ever seemed to dampen her spirits for very long. She seemed as happy playing tag as playing catch.

Then, well, the children were too young to have money or a car, so it was hardly their fault that Samantha had a couple of long-legged puppies with a big hound from a nearby farm--except that the children decided it would be fun to have puppies, and set up the "date" that enabled a small female dog to mate with a big male. Fortunately there were only two viable puppies and Samantha was able to give birth without complications. The children begged to be allowed to keep the puppies. In the end they were allowed to keep the male puppy because nobody else would take him. He was a nice-looking hound but as empty-headed as Samantha was clever. After Samantha was gone her son even took to straying and nipping. 

But most of the time Samantha was a very good dog. What I remember, as we all grew up and I moved away, is Samantha scampering after the children on dainty little legs hardly long enough to keep up, with just an occasional "Wait for me!" yip. She went where they went. She waited politely outside houses where dogs weren't allowed inside. She was not taken to school or church, but she would probably have been a model of good dog behavior outside those places if she'd gone. She could wait when nobody was paying attention to her, but she loved anyone who went out and petted her.

I didn't hear about it if she ever really misbehaved. Nor did I hear about it if she ever took a sick day. It is possible that the children's sense of family loyalty caused them not to talk about any occasions when Samantha was less than the perfect house dog. So far as I could see, Samantha never even overate and grew fat. Over the years her muzzle turned grey and the white patches on her underside grew wider, but apart from that, even when she started to show signs of arthritis (at seventeen), she always looked like the same perky pup.

One day one of her humans gave me the bad news. "Samantha's got a disease and she's starting to feel it. She's going to be put down before the pain gets worse. It's time to say goodbye."

I spent a couple of hours that afternoon sitting on the porch, remembering and saying goodbye, tears rolling down.  Samantha licked and wagged and tried to cheer me up. How could she be an old dog, already, when I was still a young woman? It wasn't fair. The children I used to pick up and carry, in turns, when we started running around with Samantha, were grown up and married. There were white hairs sprinkled through the short soft hair that grew longer and hung down in waves on her legs, ears, and tail, but she still bounced around at her humans' heels, or mine, without ever seeming to have needed to be told "heel." 

The children's grandmother kept Samantha's son after the children decided none of them wanted him either. He was a handsome but useless animal. Even in the direct line of descent you can never count on finding a dog like Samantha. I doubt that there ever was or will be a dog quite like Samantha.

I thought about her recently, reading someone's obituary poem for another dog who'd been very old but still frisky, and decided the topic of today's Petfinder post would be mixed-breed dogs who looked a bit like Samantha in one way or another. Not, of course, that that means they'll be perfect house pets. They probably will not. They just have sweet hound-dog faces with fluffy black coats. 

Really, choosing a pet for a look alone is a foolish idea. It is, however, the closest I can get to a category of dogs like Samantha, because Samantha was a mixed breed with a perfect blend of traits from different breeds: smarter than most hounds, sturdy as a typical terrier, docile as a typical spaniel, and only a little bigger than a Chihuahua. 

Obviously they were less than perfect pets for someone else, because they are shelter dogs. But they might still be the perfect pets for some human or other. Who that might be, or whether they'll find that person, is anybody's guess.

You can help, Gentle Readers, You know what to do. If you know people in the appropriate part of the country, share these pictures with them. By sharing these pictures with other people they know, we just might be able to connect these cute dogs with the people for whom they might be excellent pets.

Zipcode 10101: Beanie from Cliffside Park 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/beanie-58740326/nj/cliffside-park/angels-for-animals-network-nj488/

Beanie and her sister Annie don't have the perfect hound-type face, and have more white hair than Samantha had for the first ten years or so, but they're small, young, black dogs with "medium hair" coats, thicker on the ears. Samantha's ears weren't as shaggy as that...Beanie and Annie are just a couple of sweet, lovable, seven-month-old puppies someone found straying around in Puerto Rico and brought back to New York City in the hopes that someone there would appreciate them. 

Zipcode 20202: Pepper from Downtown D.C. 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/pepper-57348329/dc/washington/k-9-lifesavers-dc19/

Pepper is young, with a soft "medium hair" black coat and floppy ears, but she's obviously a very different sort of dog than Samantha was. She's bigger, more retriever and less of the smaller breeds, and her energy might be overwhelming. The shelter warns that she's not completely trained to be a house pet and that other pets in the household should be dogs of comparable size and energy--no cats! They recommend a course of higher education for her. Hmm. Retrievers do learn some things quickly and thoroughly, like "fetch," "come here," "run," "dive," and "swim." They have big appetites for food and exercise, and need a lot of the "run" command to keep them from growing flabby. As a breed they're not necessarily so good with "sit," "stay," "be quiet," "heel," and "stop." But they're usually gentle, loving, lovable dogs...think Barkley, think Marley....

Zipcode 30303: Mickey from Gadsden 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/mickey-58785634/al/gadsden/humane-society-pet-rescue-and-adoption-center-al121/

I suppose it's a good thing when Petfinder just doesn't have any dogs that look like the type you're looking for; means people who have that kind of dogs appreciate them. In eighteen pages of "black dogs any breed" I saw several white and brown dogs (with black eyes or noses), but no small hound-sized dogs with medium hair. What they have for adoption are a couple of Chihuahuas, a couple of terriers, a lot of pit bulls, and dozens of big black Labs, police dogs, and other breeds that tend to need more exercise and/or food than people want to keep providing. Big dogs have short lifespans and you'd think people would make an effort to stay the course with them, she says, judging the former owners of dogs like Mickey to be poor-spirited humans. Or maybe they've all broken their legs. Anyway, here's Mickey, a relatively small retriever-and-hound mix about whom the shelter staff have little to say. He does not have medium hair or spaniel-type ears, but he does have a hound-type face. That's as close as Petfinder came.