I wrote a draft of this post days after he died, and I broke down crying halfway through. I figured I would get to it eventually and finish it, but obviously that never happened. Every time I thought about coming back and completing it… the pain came back. So I let it sit. And I let it sit for long enough that, by my own action, I lost the draft I had written.
So here, on Christmas Eve of 2024, I’m finishing this for him. This was Sam, the goodest boy in the world.
The above photo was taken on June 2nd, 2014. That was the day that my family decided to accept a request for one last foster animal. We’d been fostering Lab pups for a while, and we hadn’t ever foster failed, but we were getting pretty tired of it. That said, at the time, we were the only ones who were available - and this would be our first adult dog foster, estimated around 1-2 years old. When we got him, his name was Cocoa, which seemed unfitting. Eventually we settled on Sam.
It didn’t take long for me to become attached. We had another dog, Rocky (pictured below next to him), and while Rocky was a good dog, he was never one for affection. Sam was completely different. He loved to play with people, he loved to play with other dogs, he loved to give kisses and cuddle. He was the kind of dog that automatically assumed every human in sight was a friend. He loved to swim, which was great, because we had a river close by that he would jump into the first chance he got.
As with all fosters, though, the goal isn’t to fall in love with them. You’re supposed to keep enough emotional distance that you can let them go and move on to the next. Despite my protests, Sam would find a forever home - or so we thought. After meeting Sam and agreeing to adopt him, a few days later, they changed their minds. Of course, after this, I was completely insufferable. It was fate, I argued. We had to keep him. My parents said no, we had to do our job and let him go. So we waited for another forever home to come along, and one eventually did - before dropping out too.
Finally, my parents agreed. Sam would stay with us.
During all of high school and all of university, Sam was a constant. I would come home from school every day and he would greet me like he hadn’t seen me in years. My friends all loved to see him and would ask how he was doing. Eventually, after Rocky passed, he would even help out with the occasional foster dog.
Sam loved a lot of things. He loved people, he loved toys, he loved treats, he loved water, and he absolutely adored snow. We live in Maryland, so snowfall isn’t super common, but whenever snowfall did occur, you can bet that Sam would be in the backyard sprinting through it.
Even without snow, he loved to be outside. We would let him out and he would stand there just outside the door sniffing the air, seeing what new scents had arisen. If it was a particularly nice day, he would walk out into the backyard and flop down just to bask in the sun and enjoy the feeling of the grass.
Not to say Sam was perfect - he could be a bit of a bastard. Being a Lab, he would eat pretty much anything. At one point he ate an entire rotisserie chicken, bones and all (thankfully he didn’t have any health issues from that…). In later years, he was having pain in his teeth, so he started chewing up books to relieve it. Even with those teeth removed, he never lost his ability to eat, nor did he lose any of his cheer. In the later years, when he got super excited, his teeth would even chatter!
He was a brilliant escape artist too - if he found a way out of the house, he would take it. There was one day that I let him into the backyard, went to go play video games, and ended up forgetting that he was outside. About an hour later, I hear something at the FRONT door, and what do I find but Sam pawing at the glass to be let back in. He eventually figured out how to climb over the backyard fence, so my parents spent the cash to get a new taller fence put in. After over a month of the contractors working on it, we finally let him out to show it to him… only for him to find a crack underneath it that he could squeeze through. Within THIRTY SECONDS of letting him off the leash.
The above photo was one of the first few pictures taken with my first mirrorless camera. It was also one of the last pictures I’d ever take of Sam.
I got the call on June 2nd of this year that he was in the emergency room. I got there as fast as I could and found my brother and my parents sitting next to him. He looked more scared than I’d ever seen him. In all likelihood, he’d been suffering for much longer, but just didn’t want to show it. He’d been losing the ability to use his hind legs, and my parents had done the best they could to slow it, but eventually something has to give. We knew it was time.
Before he let out his last breath, he did something I’ll never forget.
He leaned over and rested his head on my mom’s lap.
He knew we were there.
He loved us.
He had one more Lab lean left to give.
And then he was gone.
After I went home, as I was looking through the photos that we had of him, I noticed something that I’ve already alluded to here. The day we brought him home, June 2nd of 2014, was exactly one decade to the day before he died. He held on just long enough to spend a full ten years with us.
Through all the times he frustrated me, through him climbing up on the couch so often that we eventually gave in and let him, through having to chase him around the neighborhood every time someone left our fence gate open, through all the sinus congestion and blotchy skin caused by my dog allergies, I loved Sam. More than any dog I ever had. More than any dog I may ever have. And I hope that you can understand why.
I’ll miss you, Sammy. I’m sorry I can’t spend this Christmas with you.