Slammin’ SammieDoodleBug
04/08/2007- 04/18/2023
Our keeper girl from our first litter of Allyn Portuguese Water Dogs, the last of her litter, SammieDoodlebug crossed to the rainbow bridge in her happy place by her own personal fountain of youth (aka the deep brown pond.) It was a day of doing her most favorite things - including a romp on the hill with swimming/wading/floating in the pond on the way up and back; a ride around the pond with the mama on the swim platform; lying on the deck in the sun; a shower; post shower zooms (not quite as zooming as they once were but still impressive for 16 years old imo); and a cuddle on the couch - with some of her most favorite Villagers and dog family; and most favorite treats - including meat in a metal bowl, chicken nuggets, coconut cupcakes with whipped cream, squirty cheese (especially on the medications that got her through the day relatively painlessly and completely seizure free) plus a few things she hadn’t been allowed to try before: chocolate, bacon, sausage and bloomin’ onion (she declined that one and didn’t understand why her son Trek would’ve eaten that in the first place)
She was climbing out of the whelping box the night she was born, apparently our red collared girl had things to do. And she did a lot of things (in spite of living in a home where it was “All About Jack” for so many years of her life) especially once we discovered the motivating power of Meat In A Metal Bowl and milk bones (a raw fed dog, that was her favorite junk food) to overcome her self diagnosed case of ‘third dog symdrome.’
Next to me, Sammie LOVED puppies! She was so very happy when her Mama Jill let her help with her younger half siblings. Even when they would (rarely) manage to grab her tongue with those little needle teeth, she’d just patiently pull her head back until they let go (it’s amazing how long her tongue really is) and then go right back to cleaning up their faces.
She helped me to nanny a litter of golden retriever puppies as soon as she realized that, unlike her mama Jill, Shimmr was happy to let her help clean them and help them find the bar the night they were whelped. (Their dam fed them well but she was more than willing to let the Bug do the rest of the puppy rearing)
When she had her first litter (10 puppies), somehow she managed to be an even better mother than her own phenomenal dam. She could hop over the expen into the whelping area and land all 4 feet in the space of a dinner plate so as not to step on any of the puppies. She played with them, too - something her dam Jill didn’t do. She comtinued to be a great mother with her second litter and it was always fascinating to observe her teach them things through play. (She also told me when any of them lost a tooth so we found more of their puppy teeth) even as adolescents.
She was a great aunt to Bela’s puppies and continued to help with her grand puppies and great grand puppies (although Deja wants it to be known that she didn’t play much with him or his siblings but she had trained Nanny McPhoebe in the Ways of the Good Puppy Raiser to do it. She would occasionally play with Phoebe and Deja’s puppies when they visited.)
The pond was Sammie’s domain. She didn’t guard it from the others but she would happily help harrass the geese. She was also the first to find the nesting spot. When she found it 13 years ago, she came when I called but she came the shortest distance - straight across the pond - and she delivered a goose egg to my hand. She swam every chance she got - if there wasn’t ice on the pond, she went in it. She swam for the sheer pleasure of swimming and she liked it when others would go on ‘swimabout’ with her. They resembled a fleet in formation. In her very elderly years, I made her wear a life jacket and it was the only item of clothing I’ve ever known her to not enjoy. We got smart enough to realize that if we put it on her before we went up to the pond, she would cooperate. (I’ve never known dogs so excited to wear ANYTHING. Her dam Jill was the same way and they passed it to most of their progeny. It didn’t matter which girl was in season, they ALL lined up to wear the britches. If I put someone’s long hair up out of their eyes, I had to do the others’ as well. If we shopped at a dog show, she wanted to try on/model everything in the booth.)
Although we trained her in basic obedience, water, etc., I hadn’t formally trained her to guide because that was Jack’s job and he didn’t like anyone else wearing his harness. When she and I were in Philadelphia to make her first litter of puppies (without Jack), I noted that she was guiding me while on leash. We didn’t go out into traffic to test it but she was doing all of the alerts to change in surface, finding doors, and even finding our room. So when Jack could no longer officially do his job (he lost much of his hearing when he got old), we did the rest of the training/testing to be sure she understood traffic and she took over for him. She even guided for me when she received her PWDCA Producer of Merit award at the National Specialty.
We always said that you could hurt her feelings but you couldn’t hurt her (not that we tried to do either). She was a very stoic, tough dog which did not always serve us well. She pulled off an ENTIRE toenail’s outer shell at a water trial (I found it later in the crate where she had waited her turn and it was like a hollow shark’s tooth) leaving the whole quick exposed. We didn’t know anything about it until late that night when her littermate Indy was sniffing her foot (he had a love for feet and ears) and she told him no thank you (all she did was pull her foot away repeatedly, not even a grumble at him). We had a vet tech friend come to the room to look at it; pulled her entry and kept her foot wrapped until the vet could surgically remove it. She just seemed annoyed that she didn’t get to play in the water. She’d let puppies suck on her c-section incision and she once cut her upper lip open while zooming around the pond with the other dogs. Not even so much as a yelp, we just heard a thud and later noticed the blood trail which we traced to her. We didn’t even have to put her under for the stitches, she held a chin rest with a local and a light sedative (I needed more sedation than she did.). She broke a toe once and it took months of crate rest with multiple vet visits/xrays to find the issue because she could almost always hide the pain. This stoicism made it harder in the last few weeks because I couldn’t tell if she was in pain or if she was having trouble cooling herself due to the laryngeal paralysis she developed in the last year or so of her life.
Either way, it was time for her. It will never be long enough for me but we needed to let her go while she still had some quality of life. The MSU, aka, Not the Mama, the Daddy and, occasionally, Bruce, brought her ashes home today. We’re heartbroken but hope to smile (quite possibly through our tears) when we notice her in the others. Nighty, nighty nighty good girl
