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Sam I Am I Was

On this day in 2013, Sam I Am passed away. He and his sister Sugar were my first two border collies.
My ex got some border collies for her kids when we left Myrtle Beach. It was to help them with the move since they had only known the one home. It's a long story how they ended up with border collies, but I fell in love with those two.
They just wanted someone to be with them and do things. Whenever they saw me drive up, they got so excited. I was the only one who ever really took them for walks or taught them things. When she broke up with me, I thought I'd never see them again.
After about six months, I bought a house and, figuring that was as stable as I'm ever likely to be, thought about getting dogs of my own, and border collies since I remembered them.
I couldn't afford purebred puppies but I found the Border Collie Rescue of Georgia on line. People used to make fun of me for looking for everything on Google. That's before everybody started looking for everything on Google.
They had half a dozen or so dogs, but there were two at the bottom, brother and sister. As I looked at them, I thought "I know those dogs."
So that's how they came to live with me. Both of them had been abused. She had gotten in financial trouble and dumped them on relatives who kept them shut up in crates for days at a time. Sugar knew all the major curse words and was terrified of anything resembling a broom. To the end of her days, she would get so apologetic when she thought I was angry, even when it was at the computer or something I was building.
Sugar clung close to me her whole life. Sam was sort of his own dog. He would putter around in the yard for hours, while Sugar would check back every couple of minutes. He was a big, old goofy boy. He was the happiest dog that ever lived, as well as the sweetest. He never knew anybody that didn't want to pet him, even if they didn't know that yet.
He outlived Sugar by about a year. He couldn't walk. I had a harness with handles and rubber soled shoes to help him get around. We never quite found out what he was sick of in the last days. He couldn't eat or drink, couldn't even keep water down. But every time he saw me he'd lift his leg, wag his tail and smile as if nothing at all were wrong. The last day he lifted his head once, but couldn't ever manage it again. Couldn't stand, even with help.
The Border Collie Rescue of Georgia is no more. Because of Sugar and Sam, i've belonged to rescues in the Carolinas for years, and now run the Georgia Border Collie Rescue. I guess I've saved or helped save a couple hundred dogs at this point. There was the little blind boy. There was the old lady with terminal cancer who was desperate to find someone to take care of her 14 year old companion. There was the boy dumped on the side of the road in Statesboro. There was the boy who had been completely shaved except for his tail. Late last year, there was the Great Puppy Army, two moms and 16 puppies within a month. We found homes for them all, and I was $7000 poorer. And richer by one dog, Judy Blue Eyes. None of that would have happened without Sugar and Sam.
I miss my big old boy. Six years I've been without that boy. It seems like a lifetime. I think of them every day. They were the best friends I ever had. Here he is spoiling a picture.

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