A Different Dog's Tale

I've been wanting to tell the story of Samantha, my Basset Hound for quite awhile, but it may one that completely stretches your credibility.. Although I'm afraid you'll think mine a smaller even than Pooh-brain, or worse me an ex-sniffer of hallucinogenics, I'm driven to tell this tale.

I was about twenty-three, mother of two young children, and working full time. It was no time to get a puppy, but I had always wanted a Basset and the add said they were reasonably priced, so we drove out to a beautiful area past Granite Dells to find that the pups were sold and gone except for one little female with one white eye. We could have her for half-price, and so Samantha came to take over our household.

We've had lots experience with dogs, and most of them have been well behaved, but Samantha, while eventually housebroken, refused to try to please us in any way. When she came in heat, male dogs gathered around the perimeter of the fence when she was outside. I gave her some chlorophyll tablets ( a difficult task in itself..a tablet in some hamburger seemed to go down the hatch then, much, much later, when she thought I wasn't looking..phttt..out it shot) and low and behold, the male dogs quit coming around. Sam, hormones in gear, missed her would be lovers and when I let her out for a few minutes sat in the middle of the yard calling "woo..oof..wooo...wooo...oofff...," in the best imitation May West voice that you can imagine.

The second heat got her with pups. Remember this was a time when people weren't so aware of how important it is to spay female dogs, so it didn't occur to us at the time. The thing is, Samantha hated being a mother. She had her little crate of pups and when they started squirming and mewling with hunger she would sadly approach the box. Step, stop..big sigh, step..stop..big sigh until eventually she reached it, climbed in and dutifully nursed her pups.

That was the preface, if you're still with me..this is the story.

We were living in lovely, heavily wooded Groom Creek about six miles from Prescott and about a thousand feet higher in elevation. We had found homes for all but one of the pups. He was about half grown and followed his mother everywhere. It was early in December when the pup disappeared. There was snow on the ground, so we all booted up and searched through our subdivision of mostly empty summer homes and through the woods beyond. Coyotes had gotten it, we finally concluded.

We had milk delivery and one day the milkman, after intrepidly chaining up the snowy driveway asked me if we'd lost a pup. Yes indeed, I replied.

"Ther's a lady over on Friendly Pines road who's really angry with you," he said laughing. "She has the puppy and she swears that when it was snowing, your dog came up on her porch and scratched on her door. When she heard the scratching, she opened the door, and your dog shoved the pup inside and ran away through the snow as fast as she could go. By the time it dawned on her what had happened, the dog was gone. She said the puppy seemed just as confused as she was!"

When we retrieved the pup, the woman swore the story was true, and I believed her because I have some other pretty unbelievable stories to tell about that dog. After that, we did wise up and have her spayed!