Our dog, Sam, got a phone call the other day from his Uncle Ken. (Ken is my brother-in-law, who met Sam when he was here for a visit last month.) Ken had seen my previous post and pictures of one of Sam’s destructive days, and so he called to give Sam a pep talk about being better behaved.

What Ken said. “Sam, I’m very disappointed in you. I see the destruction you made. That’s very bad, Sam. You better straighten out or you’ll have to come live with me. Sam, you be good.”

What Sam heard. “Blah, blah, blah, Sam. Blah, blah, blah, Sam. Blah-de-blah-de-da, Sam. Sam, blah, blah.”

Sam gets Ken's message off the answering machine. "Woof, woof, Ken. Woof, woof, woof."

One of my dog lover friends out here in cyberspace needs to take a minute to remind me just how much I love my dog!

I walked into the house on Wednesday after a long day at work, arms full of groceries to find this:

Arrgh! Bad dog, Sam!

Bad, bad, bad, Sam.

Not the dining room chairs, too, Sam!

Sam looks awfully sorry. Here he is laying on the afghan that Brian's mother made, ruined on another day.

I’ve had several requests to give an update on our dog, Sam.

For those of you not aware of what happened, Sam came to us about a month ago. He was badly beaten up and starving.

Now, I don’t know much about dog fighting, but his wounds indicated just that. My guess is that Sam was what is called, the bait dog – thrown into the ring to teach the bigger badder dog how to better attack.

Brian and I didn’t want to add a dog to our menagerie, so we struggled with whether we should feed him, thus encouraging him to stay. I thought he might die, so decided to do what I could to make his last days comfortable.

After a visit to the vet, we decided to bath him and bring him into the house. Our three cats, Grace, Tink and Tess were a bit leery of him, but in general, everyone got along pretty well.

I forgot to mention that Sam likes to chew on chair legs, too!

I read up on Pit Bulls, since the vet said that is partly what he is. Pit Bull Terriers are amazing creatures. They love people, are incredibly loyal, good natured, affectionate, almost always obedient and eager to please their masters. Yes, all true! Pits get their bad reputation because of how they are raised. These dogs must have masters that teach with a firm hand. Cesar Millan, author of the Dog Whisperer, offers great advice for teaching you how to raise and care for your dog. You must provide training, exercise and social skills. You must teach the dog respect for humans by not allowing it to jump up on people and not allowing it to enter doorways first. Humans must make the dog heel beside them or behind them while walking. The objective in training is to achieve “pack leader status.” Since it is a natural instinct for a dog to have an order in the pack, he must be taught that humans are higher up in the order than the dog, yada, yada.

All of these techniques worked very well the first two weeks! But, of course, that was mostly due to the fact that he was very sick, almost lethargic. Since last Saturday, he feels so much better and we are discovering that he likes to chew. The house is as puppy proofed as we can make it, yet he still finds shoes, books, carpets and paper! He now has the energy of a normal puppy and wants to jump, run and play! He has discovered his bark! After a night of quiet sleep, he likes to jump on the bed and lick our faces so we will wake up and play with him at 4 a.m.!

Puppy love

Sam is smart. He knows the basic commands – Stop, Come, Sit, Heel. And, he listens about 70 percent of the time. So, what was pretty easy at first, has now become a bit harder. But, we’re committed to it. He is our dog, Sam!