Sunday, January 03, 2010

Samson's Portrait


Long, long ago. . . we had Rottweilers. Love them. Our original was Shadrach. She was a great dog. Dumb. But great. Once we moved to our acreage, she developed a penchant for hunting porcupine. Bad dog.

But after Shadrach there was Brutus, Ferdinand, Zeus, Puppy and Scout. The best of all the Rotties was Samson. To commemorate his life, I had an artist do a portrait of him from some very old pictures. This is what Samson looked like when he was in his prime.

Eventually, I would like to have Lindsay do portraits of all our dogs for the "dog wall."

Samson would bark at rocks. . . as he rolled them down the drive. He sat in the corner of the shop when he was bad. Samson made rocks into snow boulders. He rolled around his favorite bowling ball on the property. He leaned against your leg. He growled when you hugged him. He was all typical boy. He went to sleep at night on the loveseat in the basement with his favorite Christmas blankie. In the fall, he looked embarrassed when he would wake up in the mornings after sleeping all the night with the kittens & cats in the hay bales. We almost lost him once and paid $1200 for surgery to remove rocks from his stomach. He loved Shadrach. They had lots of puppies. We loved that damned dog so much. But our life was in such a discombobulation at the time we could not afford a fence. Not that we needed a fence. Samson stayed within our property, never straying out towards the road. Until the night 2 neighbor Dalmatians stole his steak we had fed him outside. He ran after them & accidentally ran into the road. We buried him at the corner of the house with his favorite Christmas blanket carefully wrapped around him. He had not suffered any outside injuries. He looked like he had fallen asleep. But it was probably a good way for him to go. He was already crippled with arthritis every morning and it was a struggle for him to get up every day. At least this way, he went romping & claiming his territory!

It took us a long time to be able to get another Rottie, and it just did not feel "right". One of them we tried for a while, then a friend of ours said they wanted a Rottweiler. We graciously gave the dog to them. Instead, we got Isabelle - our Mastiff. She has been the best dog ever since.

On Saturday, hubby went down to work at the shop while I continued to clean upstairs and played with the puppies. Also worked on updating my iTunes and putting away more Christmas decor. It is a never ending project.

Still not sleeping well in the basement. The bed is too uncomfortable and we are in a "strange" sleeping environment. Odd.

Sunday I slept until 8:30. After letting all the puppies out at 5AM. It was difficult to find a comfortable spot to fall back to sleep within. Made French Toast for hubby's breakfast, then we got bundled up (it was icy & cold out; but no rain!) to take the puppies out for their Sunday walk. They were all so excited. Stopped to pick up lattes - nice warmth on our throats! Once we got to the walking area, we determined that along with Bravo, 8 dogs was too many to walk. Plus, Tweak decided that he would "sit" down on the ground instead of walk!

Took the 2 black dogs, Harriet & Isabelle for a walk first. Then came back to get the 2 Saints & Bud for the second walk.

When we returned, the kids came to pick up Bravo. They related how their Anniversary weekend went at Silver Mountain Resort with the indoor WaterPark & Luxury Romance GetAway! Though with the rain they were unable to snowboard as they wanted.

After the kids left, hubby did some honey-dos. Then we decided that we were too tired to go into town & it could be put off until tomorrow.

Rested for the remainder of the day. I finished filing all my iTunes again. Just need to do the Playlists over again.

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