Sammidog Rules the Roost...For The Time Being (an update)

Well, Sammidog has been with us almost three months now, and he almost has me trained.

For those of you who haven't read the post (under the label of Sammidog) about how he came to live with us, he came trudging up through the garden one morning so starved that you could see every bone in his body, and he could barely stand up he was so malnourished. Mama gave him some dog food, but her dog let him know quickly that he wasn't staying there. He followed Mama to my house. I fed him some milk and fixed him a bed and now we can't peel him off us. :)The cats had their bluff in on him for a few weeks. I started out feeding them seperately, but Sammidog would follow me to feed them, where he promptly and frequently got his jaws boxed. Then they got to swapping food, so now I just feed them all together. They get along pretty well. He sits amidst the cats, towering over them, waiting patiently when it's feeding time. As soon as the door opens though, he's all over me.

I declare he has flubber in his paws, the way he's continually jumping straight up, sometimes doing half-twists in mid-air. He looks like he's on a trampoline. It's very funny, but sometimes frustrating, especially when we're dressed to go somewhere and all of a sudden we have muddy paw prints on our butts. One of Sammidog's favorite things is to run up from behind, tap us on the butt with his front paws, then take off like he's playing tag.

He loves everybody, including the cats, and is more than a little overly zealous. I hear him yelp several times a day when the cats have had enough. I have scolded him repeatedly about the jumping up on people, but he is so hyper that he just can't contain himself. If he were a child, he'd probably be on Ridlin or something.

And stubborn. If you looked up the word in the dictionary, his picture would be there. I can call him all day long and if he doesn't want to come...he isn't going to. I think he's been taking lessons from the cats.

When he first came I could carry him in one arm, he was so light. Not now. He's solid as a rock and I can barely pick him up. He's also very strong. Sometimes, he nearly knocks me over.

He's also still puppy enough that whatever he can get hold of he tears up all over the yard. Our back yard looks really bad right now. I bought him rawhide toys and they disappeared. I don't know if he lost them, or dismantled them. He dismantles everything, including the antlered deer skull in my flower bed that I found in the hayfield and put there.

He gets so bored with nobody to play with that tearing up stuff is how he entertains himself. Anything we set down, he grabs and takes off with, and he totes stuff out of the car shed and throws it around if he can't tear it up. I told Jim that I expect anytime to see him coming out with the chainsaw.

Jim has been away working most of the time since Sammidog has been here, and it's been so cold and bad that I haven't been out much to spend a lot of time with him. Jim has one more week before he'll be retired and spring will be here soon. Maybe then we can get him under control.

He loves to go walking in the woods and fields, preferably if we're walking too. Sometimes he runs alongside when I'm on the four-wheeler, sometimes not. Depends on the stubborn factor that day.
Mama bought Sammidog this woolly lined coat for Christmas. She thought it would be funny. You can tell that he wasn't amused at all. It was a little snug. He posed for me to take a couple of pictures, then started rolling and chewing to get it off. Within a few minutes the coat was laying on the ground and he had gone to bed in his insulated house.

The only time Sammidog is still is when he's being scratched on his chest or when he's having his picture taken. He's a camera ham and when he sees one aimed at him he will hold still and pose...most of the time. If I'm scratching his chest he will wrap both front paws around my arm and sit still as long as I scratch.

Despite some bad habits and his hyperactivity, he's a delightful dog. He keeps us laughing, and he has this mischievous way of looking at you sideways, almost like he's flirting, that gets him some petting almost every time.

I've always preferred smaller woolly dogs, but Sammidog is okay, and since nobody ever came looking for him, I guess we belong to him.

The saga continues...