sam i am

this is sam. she is about six years old - we don't know exactly, because we aren't sure how old she was when she was found.

sam came into our lives by magic. she is the direct manifestation of a little girl's dream, a grown man's specifications and a little bit of... well...my own kind of oomph.

but it was libby who started it all. libby wanted a dog. libby loves dogs, has always loved dogs, and wanted a dog so badly she used to be pretend to be one. but the condo i rented prohibited animals of any kind - except possibly fish - and so poor libby had to make due with stuffed animals and playing puppy.

when we moved into pond house to live with Beloved, libby asked for a real dog. please, mommy, please, please, please? she'd beg, her big blue eyes wide in her urchin face. please, please, please?

only under these conditions, said Beloved... who had enough to cope with. the dog had to be a beagle. it had to be no one else's dog... found running around someone's backyard. it had to be a good dog, not agressive or mean. and we had to name it sam.

mommy, said libby... you're a witch... can't you work a puppy spell?

in case you haven't been reading long enough, im not really the kind of witch who works a lot of spells. im a go-with-the-flow kinda witch...you want to make something happen that badly, let's wait around and see if it happens on its own first. and lots of times, things do... manifest, resolve, or disperse, so that the desired outcome is achieved without the enormous personal investment of energy, focus, concentration and intention a real spell requires.

but i love libby and i was a bit lonely around the house during the day and i had started to think a dog might be a Good Idea. i'll think about it, libby, i said.

a good spell requires, among other things, a clear vision of what it is exactly one hopes to manifest. it seemed quite impossible to manifest a real dog with all the conditions attached to it that Beloved imposed, but the likely impossiblity of accomplishing anything has never stopped me from trying before. the world's full of little dogs, i reasoned. lots of them get lost.

and so, i began to mentally build my "puppy spell" as i thought of it and nine days into it, an online friend told me about a little beagle she'd noticed wandering into her backyard... eating bird seed and dog poop from her dog. i think it's lost, my friend said.

the humane society came and set a trap and brought the dog to a shelter, where they kept her for ten days to allow an owner to come and claim her. she was 15 pounds of fur and bones and she was wearing an orange hunting collar. she had cuts and scrapes all over her. we went to see her in the shelter on a brutally cold day much like this one. she trotted out of her pen, beagle ears all perked, tail wagging. she looked at me and i looked at her and that was it.

we brought sam home on valentine's day, 2004, just about a month to the day that libby asked me to work the spell. she spends her days lying in any patch of sun she can find, mostly sleeping, though every now and then, she'll race up and down the steps fetching tennis balls. she makes Beloved crazy ... poor sam is still terrified of men, all men, and despite the fact he prepares a hot breakfast every morning for her, she refuses to come closer than a few feet. (note to all would-be users of Magic - set your parameters carefully!) with me and the girls, however, she's the sweetest little beagle you could ask for.

i consider sam a great blessing, even though her neuroses are many, obvious and mostly involve poop. she came, not in answer to a little girl's wish, nor even in response to Beloved's command, but when i was ready to embrace and to heal the most wounded parts of mySelf. i consider sam my familiar in the oldest, most ancient understanding of that concept. she didn't come to show me what a proficient Witch i am... i had only begun to think of the spell... she came to show me how - and what - to heal.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.