April 2016
Around the first of this month we were contacted by a woman in Lewis County who had a Sammy she wanted to surrender. He was purchased from an unknown breeder, possibly in the Olympia area, by a family member who couldn’t keep him. She kept him in a kennel in the back yard because she knew he would run away if loose. For a one year old, it was a small area to live, and she knew it would be better for him to have room to run.
His name is Snowball, which she changed from Napoleon when she took him. He doesn’t respond to either, so his new family will get to choose something they like. We weren’t really sure when he first got here whether he is a Samoyed or an American Eskimo Dog, based on his size of 40 pounds and height of 20 inches. We have experienced a couple Eskies, and based on his personality we now believe he is a very small Samoyed. Snowball has every friendly and outgoing trait of a Samoyed, plus all the qualities of a very young dog. Chewing is his favorite sport and he is still learning what is appropriate. He defers to our four other dogs, male and female, so he will fit his new family. They have two Sammies already and have been on our list for a very long time. He needs the other dogs to keep him exercised and teach him what to do.
In Memory of Shadow
Back in September 2002, we had just taken over the reins of rescue when we heard of a Samoyed at the Tacoma Humane Society. We found a big, handsome boy who was about a year old, possibly a little younger. They picked him up somewhere in Lakewood where he was running loose in traffic. He was totally, absolutely blind from a congenital problem. One eye was microphthalmic and both eyes had detached retinas. How he survived is hard to imagine, but he always had a talent for sensing things in his path. A home in Montana wanted him, and we made arrangements to meet them halfway. The night before he was going to hit the road, plans fell through when the guy’s wife called and said it was his idea, not hers. We both looked at each other and said “good.” And Shadow stayed with us.
He had been here about two years when he misunderstood Charlie’s disciplining another dog (Charlie was the one who taught new dogs what was OK here). Shadow jumped on, and from that day the two boys had to be separated. We lived with gates for ten years, until Charlie passed away in October, 2014, and we bear scars from the times the gates weren’t enough. In the last year Shadow’s hearing went bad, so his life was a quiet, dark place. His nose still worked and he always knew when there was food around. He enjoyed being petted and brushed, and especially like an occasional doze on a lap.
March 17 Shadow finally told us it was time to let him go. He was about 14 1/2 years old. He was the last of our “original” dogs, and now the longest a dog has been with us is only four years. One of the great parts of rescue is being in a position to take the old dogs. The flip side is that we rarely have a dog for a long time, and never for his whole life.