Dear Mark, I am so happy you have decided to write about your dog. I am thrilled that you have come to Fresno on KMJ.
Good Luck with your show.
I love your passion, intelligence and fire in your belly.

I lost Sam, my precious Golden Retriever in May. He would have been 13 on Friday, Oct. 26. My husband was physically handicapped and you would think that we had trained the dog to be a service animal the way he tried to help He carried my groceries from the car, emptied the garbage and put the wastebasket back where it belonged, he helped with my laundry, and even helped with changing the toilet paper roll. (Actually, he just let me do the actual changing but liked to play tug-of-war with the empty cardboard roll.)
He even helped my husband remove his shoes and socks and then learned to take off his shirt and underwear.
He was the best dog I ever had and probably will ever have. He liked to help people carry things into the house.
Since I am a piano teacher, my students would give him their musibooks, keys, pocketbooks, even sunglasses…anything that anyone carried, he had to help.

He loved when we had birthdays or celebrated Chanukah or Mother’s Day or Father’s Day so that he could help open the cards, and then would help unwrap the gifts and then put the paper in the wastebasket.

Most of alll, he was the funniest dog and sweetest dog I ever had. He had lots of personality. One day, when a friend came over, and wasn’t carrying anything in his hand, Sam just picked up an empty glass from the coffee table that I had been drinking from. Sam thought he was so clever and had to show off what he had done by walking around and around the coffee table with the glass in his mouth.

Another time, he had “stolen” some nuts and bolts from a footstool that I had stood on to change my airconditioning filter.

I really really miss him.

My husband died a few months after Sam. My husband, Burt, used to keep his medicine bottles on a table beside his hospital bed.
When Burt inadvertently dropped his bottle of meddicine, Sam would hear that sound, from anywhere in the house, and would go under the bed or under the table to pick up the medicine bottle to give to me.

Mind you, he did nothing for “free.” There is no free lunch in America and Sam was a good Libertarian/Republican because he always
“worked for food.”

Thanks for allowing me to share my wonderful stories about Sam.

Sunny From California