Our tough little dog, a girl from Wagga Wagga, had been with us for fourteen years when she finally felt the pain.
Selected from a tangle of of legs and tails and piddle in the bottom of a big plastic tub, Sammy was something like a Jack Russell x Aussie Terrier ? Silky Terrier - she was small, hairy, smelly and loving. She was no doll, but she was Katie's dog.
Sam grew up with our family, unknowingly being part of the glue the held us together. Always there, outside in the early years, to give the boys a wrestle, to be a confidant when all the world was against them, to sit with and just chat when times were better.
During her life she had many adventures, falling from trees when chasing sparrows, being stuck underground for hours when rabbiting, pursuing ducks and swans beside, and into, the lake. She was, one morning, lucky to escape a chopping as she ran very close underneath a helicopter landing behind our house.
When she was six Sammy the climber fell. One night she tumbled from the top of a sheet of weld mesh, seriously hurting herself, hooking her hind leg and hanging upside down, her body weight pulling at the skewer in her thigh. Her yelping drew us running and she was quickly disengaged, to the sound of the escaping possum as it scrabbled up a tree.
In time her wound healed, but the next year a lump had appeared under the scar. The vet removed it only for us to see it come back with vigour and begin to fill her hind leg. Some more examinations and we heard that the growth was also in her back.
Little Sammy was tough, she carried her 'chop leg' with her for another eight years. It was like she wore a mask of happiness not showing concern to her disability.
The lump lay dormant until Sam was fourteen, when it increased rapidly in size and began to cause her great pain. As our vet Dr Di reassured us, it was best that we could help her overcome that last challenge with decency and dignity.
Sammy was buried under a peppercorn tree beside the billabong, protected by some granite rocks at Kate's family farm.
While digging her grave, the remnants of a ceramic doll's face were found - perhaps a prior burial, another girl's good friend from a much earlier era. It was a chilling find. A hauntingly fine ceramic mask, a death mask, which raised a number of questions - some perhaps best unanswered.
The mask will be returned to it's home under the peppercorn, with Sammy for comfort - the dog and the doll together.
