Sammy Story 17: More eating and drinking
October 19, 2020 | Sammy Stories | 4 Comments
It was October. Sammy had been with us for over three months.
He didn’t go for his breakfast like a starving refugee the day after the party, afraid that at any moment some one would come and steal his food. Maybe because all of the people and confusion made him feel a little spooked from the night before.
He had spent most of his day sleeping in his basket at my side while I wrote.
It was five o’clock in the evening, and he had finally roused himself to go and sniff his food dish all by himself, without the comfort of mom standing guard nearby. He couldn’t quite see me as I was still sitting in the living room, so he is brought his morsels into the living room, dropping them on the rug and then eating them, then going back for more and repeating the process.
This was huge. It meant he didn’t need me physically beside him to feel safe. He had enough faith to know I would be there, even when he couldn’t see me. Hurrah!
If I was going upstairs to bed, you-know-who had to follow. I’d open the kennel door and he would hop right in. For the first while, I would close the door, so that we didn’t have any accidents on our rug. I was so worried he wasn’t getting enough water, and he only felt safe enough to drink when it was dark and quiet. So I got a dish that could hook onto the bars of the kennel and had water for him. Since I was the one letting him out in the morning, and he stuck to me like glue, not letting me out of his sight, I was confident I could get him downstairs to the door to go out.
Unfortunately, if Theo was around, he’d get super-spooked and pee as soon as he saw him. So, no more water at night for Sammy. I figured that eventually he would take a drink when he needed to. I knew he was thirsty, because he would sniff at the shower and lap up the drops while I got ready for bed. But then, after a while, he learned to drink an hour or two before bed, and since I let him out one last time before retiring, it worked out okay.
Again, it made me sad to contemplate what this little guy must have gone through if he was so afraid to even eat or drink like a normal dog.
