Sammie as a puppy

When Sammie came into my life 14 years ago, she was a cute puppy who very cleverly overcame multiple obstacles my brother and I set up to try and keep her in our kitchen at night. She chewed up the bottom of the kitchen cabinets in our rented townhouse and attempted to escape through the actual wall under a window one day. That's the day my brother called me at work to tell me we were "taking her back." Of course, we didn't do that.

Sammie the puppy was full of energy. We ran her between us in a field behind our home to wear her out. We also ran her up and down the stairs in the townhouse until she could barely do it she was so tired. That's how we got her to slow down to sleep at night. One of the cutest things she did was to take a plush toy in her mouth and carefully place it at the top of the stair railing and release it so it would slide down and eventually flop onto the floor at the bottom. We thought it was a fluke at first until she repeated it over and over again.

Sammie got Christmas presents which she dutifully unwrapped herself. She went on walks. At night she howled like a beagle. As she got older, her body started looking more like that of a greyhound or whippet and we learned she could run really fast. She loved chasing birds & following her nose. Pretty soon we couldn't run her freely between us in the field because she just kept on running... We decided she was not part German Shepherd, though the beagle ancestry seemed accurate. No doubt she was hound dog, but who knows of what breeds.