Kisha was the first dog that became part of our family.
AKC "Kisha's Pearl" was born December 7, 1985 and we brought her home
on March 2, 1986 when she was an adorable 11-week-old, ball of white fluff.
This is one of our favorite pictures of her, taken when she was 14 1/2 years old. She was still a beauty with a gorgeous, white coat and a sparkling personality.

Kisha was so much a part of our lives ... she was always there through the good times and bad. She was the smartest dog I have ever known ... clever, bright, extremely intelligent and always curious about life. She loved all people and animals. When Kisha was 3, we brought Holly home as an 8-week-old puppy. They became life long buddies and had a grand time together.
Kisha was my 'heart-dog' ... that one in a lifetime best friend and companion, that you are blessed to have in your family.

The years went by too quickly and time was getting short for us. Kisha celebrated her 16th birthday on December 7, 2001 and had a great time, as she did everyday of her life. Even at 16 she was still the benevolent 'leader of our pack'.
Sadly, Kisha passed over to the Rainbow Bridge December 26, 2001.
She was our baby and will be loved dearly for all time.

Kisha was still going for her 1/4 mile evening walks up until she was 15 1/2 years old. Then as her arthritis progressed, we still took her out on her walks ... except she got to ride in her red wagon! When we got to a flat grassy area, we would help her out and she would walk around and check out all of the good smells.
This is Kisha at 15 years and 9 months ... every girl needs a 'red convertible'.

This is Kisha with her best buddy in the world, our first Keeshond Holly.
They are together again ... playing tag in the fields of the Rainbow Bridge. We will miss you both for all time and we will meet again ... love always, Mom & Dad.

My husband said "There is a message from the Samoyed rescue group, saying there is an older female Samoyed in need in Connecticut. Apparently she has been surrendered to a veterinarian and he contacted rescue for help.
Do you want to go check her out?"
After we lost Kisha in December 2001, we knew at some point we would rescue an older Samoyed in need. We had already rescued four Keeshonds after our Holly died in 1999 and we knew our 'angels' would send another needy dog our way. "Sure", I told Mark "I'll answer the email and get the vet's name and number."

It was September 2002 and Jazzy was an 11 and 1/2 year old Samoyed who had lived in a group home for adult retarded women for several years. We have no record of where she lived prior to this home. Apparently, she became ill with Lyme disease and because of her age and other medical issues (arthritis, hip dysplasia and a heart murmur), her caretakers were considering euthanizing her.

Luckily, Dr. Stone convinced her caretakers that Jazzy still had a life ahead of her and asked them to release her to him. He promised to take care of her medical problems and to find her a new home. They released Jazzy to Dr. Stone and he set about treating her illnesses and searching for a rescue group to assist him. That is how he found MinuteMan Samoyed Club Rescue the rescue group we work with.

So, on September 22, 2002 we drove to Connecticut, picked up Jazzy and brought her to her new home. She had stayed at the clinic for almost two weeks and had received excellent care. Her Lyme symptoms were gone, she had lost several pounds, and she was bright and interested in life.

Jazzy turned out to be quite a character! Everyone thinks older dogs are mellow and quiet ... not Jazzy. She was a bit bossy and boy could she bark and howl. Even being overweight, arthritic and dysplasic, she tried to keep up with the younger male dogs in the yard. And she let them know when they did something she did not like! Her personality was very different from Kisha. But she was bright, settled into the family, figured out the Buster cube within minutes (hey, it was food) and life was good! And she has the "Sammy Smile", which we had missed.

After Jazzy had been with us for almost 7 months, her coat (which had been shaved frequently by her former owners) had still not shown much growth. One of the things you should never, ever do is to shave the coat of any Northern breed. So, she wears a coat in the cold or inclimate weather. She is moving quite well as she is on daily Cosequin for her arthritis and she is down to 56 pounds.
She loves to go for walks and rides in the car, as well as visits to PetSmart with our other older gal "Tasha".

We also are proud to say that in February 2003, after her 12th birthday in January, Jazzy completed a "Good Manners" obedience class and was the oldest dog in her class. It just goes to prove, you can teach an old gal new tricks !

What can we say ... we love her and are very glad she is here
(I think Kisha sent her our way ... thanks Kisha-pie).

Frosty came to us as a rescue in 2004 when she was about 3 years old. Her owner had been forced to move from a house to a mobile home, and was not able to take all of his pets. So he tried to do the best he could for her and contacted rescue to get her into good home.

After Frosty had been with us several years, we noticed she was having trouble jumping up into our trucks, she also wasn't counter surfing as much, and she didn't carry her tail as high as she did when she first arrived. We visited the vet several times, and nothing could be found, so he just attributed it to old age.

After another couple of years, we were trying to diagnose another medical issue, and Frosty needed to have an ultrosound. While the ultrasound showed nothing related to the medical issue, the vet did notice Fristy's adrenal was very, very small. She then asked if we had ever tested Frosty for Addison's disease.

We had not, but decided it would be the next test for Frosty.

After the appropriate tests were done, it turned out Frosty did indeed have Addison's disease. She was fortunate as her version was the one easily treaded with prednisone.

Within about three weeks of being on the prednisone, Frosty was able to jump into our trucks, and was counter surfing with the best. It was very nice to see her doing all of these things again.

In the fall of 2010, we noticed Frosty coughing more than normal. We did a number of tests, all of which were negative. It wasn't until we did some chest X-rays that the vet spotted something questionable. Because of all our recent experience with various forms of cancer, we decided to have an oncologist look at the X-rays.

Unfortunately, it turned out Frosty had cancer. Not wanting to put Frosty through any invasive surgery if she had wide spread cancer, we decided to have a CT scan done to see how much the cancer had spread. In Frosty's case, she was fortunate the cancer appeared to be isolated to a portion of one lung.

Frosty actually had no more occurrances of the lung cancer. But about 8 months after her lung surgery, we found alump under her jaw. This, unfortunately, took several weeks (and trips to the oncologist) for the vet to find as it was positions. In other words, if Frosty held her head in one position you couldn't feel the lump; but if she held her hea din a different position, you could feel the lump. By the time the vet was able to find the lump, we had passed the point where surgery would have been possible. So we opted to do what we could with radiation and chemo therapy.

Here is Frosty, two days before we had to let her go doing one of her favorite things: watching the street out in front of our house and enjoying the sunshine.

After having to let Frosty go when her cancer became too much, we only lasted a few weeks before realizing things just didn't seem right without a Sammy in our home. We have had, at least, one Sammoyed in our house for about 25 years.

After a few telephone calls and some waiting, we were able to have Tala (AKC "Northwoods HH Tala's Rhythm"; the litter had a musical theme, and we liked the name Tala so we found: Tala (or Taal) is the term in Indian classical music for the rhythmic pattern of the music) join us.

In addition to all the socialization we did with Tala from the time she arrived, we started doing classes to not only give here something to do, but to help her learn to learn. Here she is showing off her skills targeting a small box in the puppy (agility) class.

Tala had mostly fun on her first birthday. She wasn't all that excited about the hat, but she loved the goodies.

When Tala came into our family, we knew she suffered from Distichia and would require surgery to correct this condition at some point. With the removal of the ingrown eyelashes, Tala's eyes got more sensitive to wind blowing into her face. To help with this, we taught Tala to wear Doggles. Tala is such a quick learner, she got the idea after just two or three training sessions. She doesn't like to where them all th etime, but doesn't mind them at all if we take her walking on a windy day.