We Should’ve Named Her Samson

We Should’ve Named Her Samson

When our friends announced that they were giving away three female akita puppies, I immediately thought of the movie, Hachi, where this regal-looking akita sits next to the train station, waiting for his master to come home for years and years after his death.

Needless to say, I immediately claimed one of the pups as ours, and we brought her home and named her Kashi—naïve akita owners that we were—in honor of the renowned Hachi.

However, like many things in life, our experience has not been like the movies.

Within the first few months, Kashi did typical puppy things: upsetting plants, slobbering all over windows, eating anything that wasn’t nailed down, running off with the right half of my favorite pair of sequined sandals.

Then things became – how shall we put it? – more complicated.

Our normally passive hippie neighbor came huffing and puffing to our house—his long white ponytail askew—and explained that Kashi had jumped into the middle of his Buddhist retreat’s meditative circle, decimating the sacredness of the moment.

This foray only increased Kashi’s awareness that there was a great big world beyond our forty acres.

She constantly loped over to our neighbor’s house, and I constantly had to go and bring her back.

I thought we could train her to stay within our yard, but it was to no avail. Kashi still wanted to play with our neighbor dogs, but our neighbors did not want a wolfish-looking beast with rippling muscles beneath her sleek gray fur coming over to play, even if she would rather pounce on a swarm of butterflies than attack someone.

We put in an underground fence, and she darted right through it—curled tail down, ears flat—like she was busting out of Alcatraz.

Shortly thereafter, my husband put in a zip line that was almost as long as a runway strip.

Kashi could run back and forth without getting zapped by the underground fence, and I could sit outside without having to worry about Miss A, our daughter, getting trapped under Kashi’s massive body and spit-shined.

It’s now a year and a half later, and Kashi still jerks me hither and yon whenever I take her for walks: sniffing and “attacking” everything from discarded water bottles to fluttering leaves.

Still, I’ve been feeling like we’re getting somewhere.

She at least heels to the stroller even if she won’t heel to me. (Does this make my daughter the alpha?)

Then, this week, I decided to tie Kashi to the porch post of the abandoned Civil War-era historic house near where we live, so I could pick daffodils in the yard and Miss A could decapitate them undisturbed.

I gathered a huge bouquet. Then we sat in the grass and soaked up the early spring sun.

After a while, I loaded Miss A in the stroller and returned to the plantation house to untie Kashi.

That’s when I noticed the porch post was leaning at a . . . unique angle, far away from the porch; Kashi’s lead rope still tied to the middle of the post.

I was shocked and horrified. I quickly untied Kashi and tried to push the post back into place.

I was able to help it a little, but it still looked like the entire porch was going to implode, taking the historical landmark with it.

Meanwhile, Kashi continued wagging her curled tail and grinning at me as if wondering what all the fuss was about. That’s when I realized we should’ve avoided the Hachi link and named Kashi Samson instead.

Do you have any dog stories? If so, please share!