Remembrances: Sam

I'm starting a series of remembrances -- little vignettes about those we'd like remembered. To start on a less-expected note, my first remembrance is about Sam, the dog we had for 12 years of my childhood. This is a little sad, but since most of my time with Sam was pretty great, I can't help but smile even at these memories....

The first time my brother took me out for a driving lesson, I confused the brake and gas pedals and nearly killed our family dog. At that point Sam (the dog, not the brother) was already thirteen years old, racked with arthritis, and recently neutered. He had become lethargic, a slow shadow of the great husky/shepherd beast he had once been. But as I eased up the driveway, and suddenly zipped the car forward at an alarming pace (my brother shouting, “Brake! Brake!”), Sam moved faster than we’d seen him move in years.

Sam would only live another 6 months, finally throwing himself behind the wheels of a UPS truck parked on the icy hill outside our house, and daring the truck to put him out of his misery. Which it did, leaving a brown stain which would quickly be covered with a protective coating of new ice, and would serve as our memorial to Sam for the rest of the winter.