Monday, July 25, 2011

Sam Bernacki: May He Rest In Peace

My dog, Sam, recently past away.

Although majority of you guys have never met him, I’d like to think you’ve enjoyed parts of his persona over the past few years. With two of my most popular posts, his drawings have generated two hundred and thirteen views, which hopefully captured his adorable confusion and his ability to love fully without judgment or reservations. He made every single person that he met feel like the most special person in the world; from the moment that he saw you, he would bark and wag his tail and smile at you like, ‘Where have you been all my life, you’re my new best friend!’

He was my best friend, and he will be greatly missed.

We met him seven years ago in downtown Fort Worth, Texas. It was a frigid winter’s night, and I drove my car to meet my parents at a movie theatre to watch ‘In Good Company.’ When I met my parents inside, my mom said that a very skinny dog jump on her in the parking lot and, since it was so cold outside, they decided keep him inside the truck while we watched the movie. Man, did Sam jump on the right person. It was an okay movie, but I kept thinking of my mom’s imminent reaction; a stray dog jumped on her … and she put him into her vehicle. Personally, I thought he would be a scrawny little dog who was scared out of his mind to be trapped inside a small compartment, but after the movie, they called my cell phone and said that he was peacefully sleeping in the back seat. So they decided to take him home. At our home waited Luke, our protective house dog that we had for about six years prior. Although Luke made friends with a few stray dogs around our neighborhood, he was best known for periodically attacking a dobberman pinscher down our street… because he could. Luke was an alpha male, who was essentially treated like he was my brother. When they let Sam into the house, Luke immediately growled at him, but Sam was undeterred. He sniffed Luke and pleasantly walked where we were sitting, and he jumped onto the couch, laid down, and started to lick Luke’s muzzle. Eventually, Luke just looked at us with his lip curled as if to say, ‘Shit, we’re keeping him, aren’t we.’

Sam died today of a heat stroke; he was eight years old. I decided to take him on a run this morning, and he couldn’t make it home so I carried him the rest of the way. A long story short, I stayed with him in the house until I knew that he wouldn’t get better on his own and I called my step-father who took him to the vet, and they decided to put him to sleep.

Quoted from the character Albus Dumbledore, "Do not pity the dead... Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love." Above all else, I hope that Sam knew that he was loved, just as much as he loved each and everyone of his family members. Everyday was an adventure, and he made ever moment count from lying beside me while I typed throughout the night to waking up at dawn to watch my parents drink coffee.

He was an amazing dog, and we will never forget him.

Good bye, my big eyes and floppy eared puppy.