By Joseph Wilson
For George
Dateline: Northern Nova Scotia, winter of 1976. Sheilah had just been born into a barely finished little house just three or four months earlier. A family of four: mother, father, Sheilah and a young female Black Labrador Retriever – Sam (short for Samantha). An old-fashioned wood fired cookstove warmed the house and kerosene lights hung from the ceiling. Electricity and running water were still years away.
Sam came into our world a year or so earlier as a puppy. Runt of the litter. I first saw her as a little black head protruding from William’s partially zipped jacket.
The guys at the boatyard had gotten together and got her as a replacement for a previous dog that had a bad habit of chasing cars. Sam came home. No Sheilah yet. Just as well, as we were still felling trees to make a clearing for the house.
One day in late January or early February, Sam didn’t come home. That was a little unusual because it was pitch dark at 5pm. I figured she got distracted tracking a deer or a fox and just lost track of time. She knew the forest around us well as she spent the previous summer and autumn exploring as we cleared land and built the house.
It got later and colder and still no Sam. I went out calling for her and looking for tracks, but it had started snowing and any tracks were long since covered up.
We settled down in the loft to sleep, but I just lay there staring at the ceiling and listening to Sheilah’s gentle breathing.
Along about midnight, I thought I could hear a dog barking far in the distance. I listened a while longer and heard more barking. Could it be Sam?
I got dressed and looked for a flash light in the junk drawer, but naturally it was dead. There was a kerosene lantern by the chopping block, so I lit the wick and followed the sound of the barking.
The snow had stopped, but it was bitterly cold. Below zero on the old Fahrenheit scale that Canada was phasing out. It was a clear, cold moonless night, but between the kerosene lantern, the starlight, and the fresh snow, you could see to walk. The fresh snow was fluffy and about mid-calf in depth so breaking trail was fairly easy.
After a while, the barking seemed to be getting louder and easier to locate. It was slow going weaving in and out among the spruce trees, so I veered toward the river which was shallow and frozen to the bottom.
I made better time along the river, and the barking was definitely getting louder.
It had been over an hour but less than two when it seemed like the barking was off to the right, uphill, and back into a stand of spruce and fir. It was slower going now, but I was getting close.
A while later I came to a clearing in the woods. In the center of it was a thick grove of fir trees about sixteen feet tall. The barking was coming from within.
I found an opening and went in. Now it was pitch black as the densely packed fir trees blocked out any starlight.
By the flickering yellow light of the kerosene lantern, I came upon a macabre and bizarre sight that I’ll never forget. It was an image straight out of Dante’s Inferno.
Within a small clearing about twelve feet in diameter, chicken carcasses had been nailed to the trees about four feet up. At the base of one of those trees was Sam. She was caught in a smooth-jaw leg hold trap.
I knelt down to open the trap but I just couldn’t do it. I knew nothing about spring traps and couldn’t find a release or just didn’t know the technique. I simply couldn’t get it open to release Sam’s foreleg.
Following the chain to where it was wired to the base of a tree and untwisting the wire, I was able to release the trap and Sam from the tree. Positioning Sam over my shoulders with her head hanging down on the front of my left shoulder, I held the lantern, trap and chain in my left hand and reached back around with my right arm and balanced Sam. I stood up, and in this manner we retraced my steps home.
Despite the weight of the dog, chain, and trap, the going was not too tough. It was slightly downhill and easier not having to break new trail by just stepping into outbound footprints. I think I was hurrying, and we made good time on the homeward leg.
I lay Sam on the rag rug in front of the cookstove. Even with my wife’s help, we could not release the trap. I called my friend and coworker Theodore on the phone. Even though it was three in the morning, he said he’d be right out.
Between the two of us, we forced the jaws open and released Sam’s leg. Almost immediately, it started to swell up. Theodore suggested we call Dr. MacKay, the veterinarian in the next town over. A groggy Dr. MacKay answered the phone. I described what happened and he said to bring Sam right in. Theodore helped me put Sam into the truck and off we sped to see the vet.
As Dr. Mackay examined Sam, I asked if he could save the leg. He just said, “Leave her. I’ll see what I can do.”
Two days later, we got a call from the Vet Clinic saying to come and pick Sam up. No details.
Sam was very happy to be carried into the little house on the Big Caribou River. Her foreleg was wrapped in a white bandage and was thankfully the same length as the other one. She recovered with no complications and became a major fixture in our household.
As Sheilah grew and started to feed herself at the highchair, Sam would position herself directly underneath. It didn’t take long for Sheilah to figure out a fun game for she and Sam to play.
Sheilah would take a spoonful of mashed potato, gravy, and peas, dump it on the floor and then lean over the tray to watch Sam gobble it up. Repeat. Repeat. Inverting her sippy cup brought a similar visual reward.
And so it went. Three more children would occupy the same seat in the same highchair and play the same game with Sam. Yet to come were Daniel, Matthew and Catherine.
Sam was white around the muzzle by the time she played the game with Catherine, but she played no less enthusiastically.
