Dog look back in anger: Sam I evil? Yes I’m Sam!

The Cavalier King Charles Obituaries Part IV

Shoes. That’s what I think of when I think of Sam. Sam was our first and only boy Cavalier, and he was the last in the line of heirs to the Cavalier throne at Burton Road. This is possibly because after Sam, nothing could have persuaded us to get another Cavalier.

Sam arrived when Holly was still alive. He was probably a third of her size, though as they say, size doesn’t matter. My mother would apologetically refer to Sam as “a rescue dog” in front of visitors. This wasn’t entirely the truth of the matter. He was from a second cousin of ours, D., whose family had decided to up sticks and move to Spain. Sam was a pub-dog. He’d grown up above a pub and we soon learned that he loved curry more than anything else in the world. He was very attached to D., well trained, and would jump up on her knee and sit beautifully when she whistled to him. We don’t think he ever got over being left behind by her.

The Spanish move didn’t work out for D’s family. Apparently they got off the plane, started crying, and came back home again. But they didn’t ask for Sam back. In retrospect we should have forced the issue, but I think my mother was too charity-minded. She wanted to “help” Sam. Sadly, Sam was beyond any kind of help. We used to joke sometimes that the failed move to Spain was in fact an elaborate ruse to get rid of the dog, because Sam was Evil, with a capital E.

He seemed well trained and well behaved when D. arrived with him. Then she left. Sam wandered around looking a bit lost and confused. We talked to him gently, he was quite small and nervous and unsure of himself. He did the cutest thing, walking into the dining room with one of my sister’s Doc Martin’s held by the lace. He kept hold of that boot all night. At some point it became necessary to negotiate the replacement of the boot with another toy, so I stepped in and attempted a swap. I was unprepared for the roaring aggression I got in response. He bit my hand and drew blood. None of our Cavaliers had ever done that! I was shocked.

Over the next few days and weeks our peaceful family home became a war zone. Sam entrenched himself on the highest chair in the living room, dominating everyone. He barked aggressively whenever anyone entered or left the room, sometimes if we made eye contact, he’d come charging after us in the hopes of taking a chunk out of a hand or a leg. Why we kept him, I just don’t know. He made our life a complete hell.

He would get so wound up about guarding his chair that he would almost puke when anyone approached him. His eyes would go wide and his head would go back and his ears would quiver and start to spread like a gremlin and he would make a quivering little growl just under his breath. He refused to eat and would guard his food for days until he was so starving he had no choice. We were forced to put the food on his chair, or else the aforementioned fat freak Holly would eat it. We really didn’t know how to deal with him, and we did a pretty bad job of it. We even took to growling back at him when we went in or out of the room, and I guess that made him twice as mad.

“Sam I evil?” We would chant, paraphrasing my sister’s Metallica. “Yes I’m Sam!”

Shoes. God, that dog was embarrassing. He started humping our shoes. Not on our feet of course, but no shoe left around the house was safe. He’d sneak upstairs, pee on the bed, then steal a shoe for dessert. He made the most horrible straining sound when he humped shoes. So we had to have him done: snip, snip. Apparently he bit the vet. I think my parents regarded having him done as some sort of revenge. Sadly, it did not curb his aggression.

Sam’s defining moment was when he bit my sister’s boyfriend. Said boyfriend turned out to be a shit, so perhaps Sam was on her side after all. At the time, my Dad was so furious with Sam that he kicked him out the back door. Literally. Picked him up, removed him from the room, took him to the back door and kicked him up the arse. Sam remained completely unfazed and immediately headed off on a major “border patrol” around the garden, barking his crazy little nut off because he’d seen the fox. Sam chased the fox around the entire length of the garden then fell off the front wall. It was a three-metre drop to the road. How the little dick managed it, I don’t know. Said boyfriend’s father found him at the front gate looking dazed and confused. “Is this your dog?” A lesson in humility perhaps.

It took years for us to learn how to handle Sam. The little bugger wouldn’t die either. All our other Cavaliers died young, but Sam just hung on and hung on to spite us. Perhaps it was because he turned his nose up at biscuits. Towards the end we had generally made our peace with Sam. He would still try to bite guests and could turn on any one of us unexpectedly, but gentle words and tactful placing of a dog bed on the living room floor did wonders, so he eventually gave up his throne on the Queen Anne chair in the corner of the room.

Sam’s death was the most slow and painful of all the Cavaliers. He developed some sort of horrendous skin disease. His skin turned red and his fur started falling out. Nothing the vet gave us worked, the poor little bugger was on steroids and all sorts. His skin became huge and loose and wrinkly, and no longer was he a pretty dog hiding an ugly personality. Like Dorian Gray, his sins became etched on his body.

The disease spread from one back leg to another, and down his side to a front leg. He looked a wreak. By this time I’d moved out. I came home to visit one Sunday, and I was shocked when I saw him. He was breathing heavily and seemed in great discomfort. He was exhausted and wanted to lie down, but it seemed he couldn’t breathe when he was laid down and kept having to sit up again. I ended up on the floor with him trying to support his body so he could get some relief. “Dad, this dog’s going to die, he needs to go to the vet’s.” The strange thing was, they’d become so attached to him that they put off the appointment until the next day, in the hopes that he would recover. Sam passed away the following morning in my sister’s arms, thus ending the reign of the Cavaliers at Burton Road.