Canter Bridge

Sammy, whose weekend name change from clichéd ‘Simba’ to the humbler diminutive of ‘Sam’ more accurately reflects Midwestern modesty, is a high-stepper. When you’re blind, I suppose, you take whatever measures are necessary. When on unfamiliar turf—which appears to have been Sammy’s lot from birth—and you can’t see it in front of you, you step high as though marching in the hope that your feet will find the terrain’s irregularity before your nose bumps into it.

This, at least, is one of Sammy’s ways of negotiating his fate.

‘Thing is, Sammy doesn’t have to high-step as much as he did forty-eight hours ago. After a mere weekend in his new home, he begins to sense where things lie. Sure he still crashes inelegantly into walls and doors and people and The Other Dog from time to time, sending us to that netherland between a wince and a laugh.

Yet the boy shows a remarkable ability to begin to understand the map.

The Samsters warms the heart as well with his gathering acceptance that we are here to help and not to harm him. Just last Saturday, he shrank from my voice. Now he follows me wherever he can and even puts his beautiful red Rhodesian chin on my lap to request special scratching.

It became clear on Night One that Sammy was not going to be sleep in his crate. Common wisdom is that Ridgebacks enjoy having their own space and are happy to retreat to the plastic-and-metal sanctuaries we create for them and then line with old blankets. Not so our Sammy. Perhaps owing to some unpleasant angles he may have found himself inhabiting during his prior life as Unwanted Dog, he made it clear to us that a night in a crate was not going to happen.

Sammy is now very much Wanted, so some changes are in order.

After repeated failure on my part to coax him into his crate for nighttime, my wife crawled into it herself, treats in hand, and got the boy halfway in. Halfway but no more. Sammy has his principles. After extricating Linda from the crate in which she had become struck, a deal was struck: Sammy will sleep on the unfinished side of the basement on Dear Departed Tucker’s comfy bed. Tucker would have wanted it this way, I reassure myself.

Rosie, meanwhile, has been promoted to my office on the other side of the basement. Her sometime plush life in my reading chair has now become her permanent night-time location.

Problem solved, we tell ourselves. First battle won, Sammy no doubt gloats behind those unseeing eyes. Sammy needed a win. He’s got one now.