Shortly after Delilah joined our pack in 2007, we put our house on the market.  Shortly after we put our house on the market Delilah went into season.  No-one was more surprised than we were, as she had been presented to us as spayed.

The kitchen seemed the logical place to keep her when we were gone, since the floor was linoleum, there wasn’t any cloth furniture and we had a 3-foot door, which we could latch.

As this wasn’t something we had expected, I had to go out to the pet store and get the necessary supplies.  Delilah hated wearing the panties.  The first day we left her, she ripped the panties off, jumped the gate and went upstairs and lay in our bed.

I had some bar stools with high backs.   The stools were 36 inches, with a 12 inch back; making the complete height of the stool about 48 inches.  I shut and locked the gate, and placed the stools in front of the gate with the backs facing the kitchen.

Delilah jumped the gate and the stools and went back to her favorite spot on the couch.  Thankfully she left the panties on.

The next day I locked the gate, placed the stools in front of the gate with the seat facing the kitchen and left for work.

My cell phone rang, it was Lynn, “I walked in the door just in time to see Delilah sail over the chairs.”

The date was October 6, 2004; Sampson was 9 1/2 weeks old and had been living with us for 12 days.

I got up that morning to find him in his crate covered in filth; he looked so sad and scared and I felt horrible that he had been alone and sick. I gave him a bath, cleaned up his crate and waited for the vet’s office to open.

I got the first available appointment, I was afraid that he had something really bad and I would lose him.  I remember thinking I don’t care if it costs $5,000.00 I need to save this dog.  He had already wrapped himself completely around my heart.

I drove the 10 minutes to the vet with him draped across my lap; vomiting.  The stool sample (if you could call it that) was handed over to the vet tech who said, “Oh yeah, he’s got gastritis” or something along those lines.

Thankfully, it was something very treatable, we went home with antibiotics and instructions to keep him on cooked hamburger and rice for a few days, at least until he had a solid bowel movement.

I cooked a huge box of Minute Rice with a bunch of ground beef and stored it in a plastic container in the fridge.  After a few days, he was well enough to go back to his normal puppy food and I thought, “What am I going to do with all this beef and rice?’

I decided I could add some sauce to it and make a version of the stuffing you put in peppers. When I took the container out of the refrigerator, Sampson barked at me, and he kept barking because he had already associated the container with his food and didn’t know why I wasn’t feeding it to him!

We laughed at that.

I was reminded of this memory last week when Sampson wasn’t feeling so hot.

As I prepared his dinner, I wonder how will he receive this bland beef and rice when he loves his raw food so much?

But as I placed the bowl in front of him, he looked at me; smiled and wagged his tail.

Then he dug in. I wonder if he was remembering like I was?