Canter Bridge

Today was a great day at work. The team is energized, the projects are queued up, the camaraderie is palpable. Even the soup and salad at the Olive Garden seemed peculiarly flavorful to my colleague Rick and me on this late summer day in Indianapolis, where the air feels uncommonly autumnal.

Quitting time came early. I could have stayed longer.

‘Cept for Sammy, whom I could hardly wait to see. He welcomed me home with a slightly more erect posture than the slumping, fearful gait with which he began his life under our roof. My wife was on the phone with the rescue volunteer, reporting in on his progress, gleaning some new facts.

Bottom line: Sammy welcomed me home to his house. He was discernibly glad to see this man whose voice, two days earlier, made him flinch.

We frolicked in both yards with Rosie, his elder Ridgeback sister, who is coming to terms with her new bro’ right on schedule. Sammy clearly enjoys every shoulder to shoulder contact with her, strains to greet the neighboring dogs on both side when the announce their presence, perks up when some far off yappy little thing sounds off. Sammy is going to be a very social fellow.

He runs to me in the yard as I locate myself in ever new corners and call to him. Almost without a command, he sits, offers me his paw, then lies down. Ridgebacks are not always eager to please, having earned themselves a well-deserved reputation for independent-mindedness. Sammy has found that quality less than helpful in his straits. Dependent for survival on people’s good will, he aims to please.

The word now is that he never had a heartworm test. My wife, always attentive to lurking disappointment, warns me that this is a serious test, now scheduled for Friday. How quickly Sammy’s medical secrets become a lurking threat to family integrity. We want him with us, strong, intact, loyal.

Loyalty he’ll have in spades. As we lay together in the sun-drenched grass of our front yard after our locating exercises were done, he rolled over and gave me his tummy in that Ridgeback way. It was a first and I notice, since Sammy came, first things more than usual. ‘We’re buds’, he’s announcing in the Rhodesian dialect. ‘Scratch my tummy and I’ll follow you anywhere.’

Like a peppery Zinfandel, the Rhodesian Ridgeback is not a quick sell. The breed’s charms lay hidden. There’s little Labrador groveling in the dog. The Ridgeback’s beauty is not flamboyant. It grows on you, whether in Rosie’s wheaten or Sammy’s deeply reddish hue. The muscular athleticism appears threatening to some at first meeting and the Ridgeback can certainly make itself a frightening beast when it needs to defend. Yet the heart is deeply pack-ish, even social. Owners often rattle on about how gentle their Ridgeback is with children. They’re not making it up.

Rhodesian Ridgebacks are especially breathtaking in numbers. There’s nothing quite like the heap of red one finds in a lolly-gagging family of Ridgies, laying sprawled all over each other in infinite comfort. Only a knot of Vizslas compares. They’re intelligent to the max. Our Rosie habitually traces the perimeter of a new situation or even when let out into the backyard before relaxing and become a family pet again.

Life has dealt the Samsters a series of short hands. Yet his genes will assure his pluckiness. As his confidence restores itself—my wife believes his learning style looks like relearning and that he was once able to see before some unthinkable trauma beat him into darkness—he’ll not be asking for pity.

Even on Day Three, a certain nobility begins to make itself known. Sam is not yet—but is destined to become—a beautiful dog.