Who is Ben?  Well, it’s a bit of a fairy tale story really... at least from Ben’s perspective!

One Friday evening, my wife was walking home from the train station, when she heard some kids shouting in her direction and she noticed that a puppy was following her.  She took the puppy back to them and asked them if the puppy was theirs, to which they replied, “nope, we just found him.”  That’s when my wife noticed how emancipated the puppy was, even in the failing evening light.  So she made the decision to take him home since he seemed to have been abandoned.

Imagine my great surprise when I saw my lovely wife hurry in through the back door with a puppy in tow!  After she explained what had happened we contacted our nearest SPCA.  However, because we live in a different city, they referred us to our council’s Animal Control.  So while we waited for Animal Control, we gave the puppy some water (LOTS of water – man he was a thirsty boy!!) and some food (and he was soooo hungry!!). 

After feeding and watering the puppy, we played with him to while away the time.  He seemed quite young – maybe only 4 or 5 months old – full of puppy-exuberance and yet still quite gentle.  My wife exclaimed that she was starving so I offered to wait with the pup while she went off and had some dinner.

Finally the puppy started running out of energy, so I sat on the floor and propped myself up against the wall.  Almost immediately he joined me and tried to lay on my lap – not completely successful as he was a little bit big for that – and ended up lying on the floor between my legs with his head resting on my thigh.  A few times he looked up at me then rested his head again, and I got the sense that he knew that someone was coming to take him away.  As I gently stroked him, he slowly drifted off to sleep and dreamed a doggy dream with occasional little twitches.  It was so sweet!

Eventually Animal Control arrived.  The officer explained that because it was late on a Friday night, the puppy wouldn’t processed properly until Monday and therefore would be at the pound two weeks, giving plenty of time for him to be claimed or adopted.  We said our goodbyes to this dear wee puppy who touched our hearts deeply in the few short hours we had him and hoped like mad that he would find a good home!

Two weeks went by pretty quickly and we often thought of that gorgeous wee doggy that briefly disrupted our lives.  On the Thursday afternoon before he was due to be euthanized we contacted Animal Control to see if the puppy had been claimed – he wasn’t!  After putting the phone down we were so angry that someone could abandon this little fellow.  We just didn’t think it was fair this poor guy’s life would be extinguished so soon.  

So we discussed some options.  We couldn’t keep him ourselves (we only had a tiny back courtyard as our section was subdivided) and we couldn’t let him be put down, as he was just too special and deserved a good, long and happy life.  So we agreed that we would take him for as long as it would take to find him a new, permanent home.  We rang back but only got voicemail, so we left a message that we would like to adopt him.  By late Thursday evening, we hadn’t heard back and were getting a little anxious so we contacted the Animal Control officer on her cell phone.  We explained the situation and she said she would make sure the puppy was removed from the list to be put down. Yay!!  We also decided that night that his name should be Sam!

On the way to picking him up the next morning, we made sure we had all the essentials: food, food bowl, leash, bedding and toys.  After filling out the required paperwork and paying the adoption fee, we finally got to see our gorgeous wee boy!  We were one thousand per cent certain that he recognised us.  And my wife was sure that he had grown a couple of inches in those two weeks.  Then we headed to the vet to get some flea treatment, and finally off home.

One of the requirements when we adopted Sam was to make sure he was neutered and had all his shots, so we made an appointment with the vet for the following Monday.  In the meantime we put up some adverts on a couple of websites looking for a great new home for Sam.  It didn’t take long for the replies to come rolling in and the phone to start ringing.  Our requirements were pretty strict, so a fair percentage of the would-be homes were immediately ruled out. 

One reply struck a chord with us.  They had a large semi-rural section and a quiet border collie called Meg, who was missing her previous mate that had passed away.  And these people loved to take their dogs for was runs at the beach and local dog park.  We arranged to meet them on Sunday – they would drive up with Meg so they could do a meet and greet with Sam.  They were a lovely middle-aged couple, mature and obviously cared a lot about the welfare of their animals, and most importantly, Sam liked them all.  We got a good vibe too.  We explained that Sam had to see the vet the next morning and would need a couple of days to recover from the operation.  After that, we would drive up to their place for the final requirement – an inspection of Sam’s future environment. 

It didn’t take long for Sam and Sheba to make friends.  Sheba doesn’t like other cats and had never been near a dog before.  So it was great that she didn’t kick up that much of a fuss when Sam got too close.  On the first day, a bit of a low growl.  By the fourth day, she didn’t react at all.  And Sam never attempted to chase Sheba in any way.  This made for a very happy household, I can tell you!  I have the feeling that given enough time, Sam and Sheba would have been great mates.  But alas, this level of friendship was never going to be.

The day came for us to drive to Sam’s potential new home.  It was just as amazing as we had imagined.  Sam explored every inch, with Meg following him about as if she was pointing out all the features of this new place.  Sam was obviously jubilant about the amount of open space to play in and we could sense that he felt at home here.  My wife and I were very satisfied and happy with the outcome.  Sam’s new people understandably renamed him Ben as they had a daughter-in-law called Sam.  So… Ben had finally found his forever-home, and it was time for us to say goodbye.

He came into our lives like a hurricane, leaving doggy paw-prints all over our hearts.  We love him dearly and miss him very much.