Each day, a page of photo memories drops into my email. The one that dropped today shows my first meeting with my canine companion Scamp. I first named him Harley, but quickly changed it to Scamp – because that is what he truly is.
According to the Ogden, Utah, shelter from where he was adopted, he was eight months old and a schnauzer-mix. He weighed 17 pounds, most of which was a tangled mass of matted hair. While he showed no sign of physical abuse, he had clearly been neglected – and was desperate to attach himself to someone. And I was the willing sole who had made a 1,000-mile roundtrip to become just that.
It’s a good thing I didn’t know how much trouble he was going to be in the coming weeks.
He peed in the house, tore up 13 rolls of toilet paper he managed to get off the holder, destroyed half a dozen of my writing pens, some of which left permanent ink on my carpet, and chewed up my dining room table and chairs.
If I hadn’t fallen in love with him the second that he first jumped on my lap, he would have quickly gone back to the shelter.
Thankfully, by walking him every hour or so, I had him house trained in three weeks, and slowly he began to learn what toys were his and what were mine. Today, he’s never far from my side, or my lap if he can manage it. I do have one large chair that he and I both fit into.
Even so, it’s not easy as he turned out not to be a 25-pound schnauzer-mix but a 45-pound Siberian husky-shih tzu-mix.
My granddaughter Shanna says he landed with his butt in the butter. I think he and I both did.
Anyway, talk about a picture being worth a thousand words, the one above surely is. And the one below is of Scamp today.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.