Sam, the sweetest, wisest, most gentlemanly dog, the ambassador of his species - was also a hardened killer. Thankfully, he only had two enemies in the world - woodchucks and skunks.
Sam's first adventure I call "the practice woodchuck". Abby's frantic barking gave me a clue that something was going on, so I ran to find Sam (we were hiking off leash at Squire Valleevue Farm, yes, I know that's not allowed). I found Sam with a VERY large woodchuck in his jaws as he shook it vigorously. However, he had grabbed the unfortunate critter too far back and instead of breaking its neck he was likely just giving it a splitting headache and some nausea. I straddled Sam and lifted his front end off the ground. So now, I'm holding Sam and shaking him and he's holding the woodchuck and shaking IT. Finally he dropped it and, no kidding, the woodchuck landed on the ground and then turned to face us like, "Bring it on!!!" I yelled some choice words at the woodchuck including some rather insulting comments about his mental abilities. After a few minutes he waddled off into the woods unharmed. Sam went back on leash for the next hour or so and when I let him off - a good couple of hundred yards away. Yup, you guessed it, he bolted right back to where the woodchuck had been...
He eventually fine tuned his technique to my chagrin and two other woodchucks and a skunk met their demise in his jaws. He grabbed the skunk one day on a walk with my Dad in Cleveland Heights. My Dad returned and told us what had happened - Sam was reeking of skunk and I said, "But what happened to the skunk?" My Dad said that it had gotten away, so we set to cleaning Sam up. MUCH later - like years later - my Dad confessed that Sam had killed the skunk and my Dad had gone back and collected it and put it in the garbage can on the corner so that I wouldn't be mad at Sam :)
Over the years, Sam and Abby got skunked several times and it only seemed to cause them to be even more incensed (no pun intended :) the next time they happened upon a "perfume kitty" as the previous owners of my house were wont to call them...
So there were many sides to Sam. I'm not sure what caused him to despise (or at least want to eliminate) those two varieties of relatively harmless animals, though it was quite an inconvenient obsession. I suppose it's a reminder that we're all different in different situations and no matter how well we know someone, or ourselves, there is usually something that we still don't know, don't understand, or can't explain. A little mystery is a good thing...as long as it doesn't smell too bad :).
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