Let Me Tell You a Secret About Life

When our dog died, we decided that we would live dog-less for a time. I’m the dog lover in our family, and it wasn’t long before I began using pictures of puppies to talk my wife, Sue, into getting a puppy. Soon we located a litter of the cutest Bichon pups.

As we were looking at them, the owners asked if we wanted to meet the father of the litter. We said that we would. A door was opened and a fast-moving father ran around the room like a maniac, then was quickly ushered into another room. We picked a pup, and as we were walking out the door, the owner said, “Good luck.” That was a little strange, but it was a statement that would come back to haunt us.

Enter Sam

It wasn’t long until Sam, the cutest little dog you have ever seen, was part of our family. It was a joy to once again hear the pitter-patter of little paws around the house. Knowing that Sue wasn’t the type of person who would ever think of letting a dog lick her face (the sign of a true dog lover), I resolved to show my own appreciation for his place in our home by being quick to clean up after him.

Sam was the most wonderful-natured dog I have ever had. If he was chewing a bone and you got too close, he would stop eating, lick your hand, and then bring his bone closer to you so that you could be a guest at the table.

There was only one problem with him. He was an idiot.

The Maniac Years

As he grew, he would run at you. Not to you. At you. If you were sitting on a couch, he would run across your shoulders, and even sit himself on your head. More than once, he ran at a portable table on which I had placed a full cup, and put his paws on the table. Each time, I would yell, “No!” at which point he would push away, sending the hot liquid flying.

Every night, for about two hours, he would go literally crazy—running around the house like a mad dog with the energy of a two-year-old on steroids, jumping on and off of Sue’s lap, around her shoulders, down the hall, and back again. It was no exaggeration to say he was “bouncing off the walls.” He used the couches to defy gravity as he bounded off of them.

He chewed our furniture, chewed windowsills, got pictures off the walls and chewed them, and ripped up any paper he could find. He would go through the trash bin, open cupboard doors, and lift container lids to eat chocolate brownies (five at a time). He wet the bed (not his—ours), burst out the front door onto the road if given half a chance, cry if he was left downstairs at night, whimper outside our bedroom door upstairs at night, drive visitors crazy, scratch with his claws, lick with his tongue, whine with his whiner, and he would even get on top of the kitchen table after a meal and sneakily eat any leftovers. I guess he learned this after he discovered how to climb up onto the kitchen counter and eat any food he could find. Worst of all, he would take food off my plate while it was still on my lap! If I disciplined him, that was obviously a game, which sent him into more tail-wagging excitement.

A Handful

A game he loved was staring you down, but if he thought you were winning, he changed the game to “lunge at the nose.” When he went to the groomers’, they would graciously say he was “a handful.” The vet called him “feisty.” Once, he chewed the corner of my wallet; he regularly emptied it with vet fees. Often, we would lie awake at night and hear him get into the cupboard where we kept our pots and pans. I guess the cupboards reminded him of the chocolate cake he once ate in similar cupboards, upon which we had to put kiddie locks.

If I sat down to answer the phone, he would get jealous and whine. If I tried to walk around during the conversation, he would wrap himself around my legs as I walked. He did the same thing anytime I tried to walk downstairs. And he would throw himself against our bedroom door in the early hours of the morning and scare the living “nightlights” out of us.

I would continually tell Sue that it was just a matter of time until he matured. We could work it out. Meanwhile, I diligently taught him to sit, lie down, jump, roll over, and shake hands. The only command he didn’t obey was “Stay.” And that was the one that mattered. It drove us to off-the-charts stress levels. An elephant doing cartwheels each evening in the living room would have been less disruptive.

The Breaking Point

In an effort to keep the peace between Sue and Sam, I would make excuses for him—he’s tired; he’s young; he’s still learning. But one evening, I was left excuseless. That was the time Sue was feeling really exhausted after a hard day’s night. She dropped herself down on her favorite place to sit—our soft leather couch. Unfortunately, Sam had deposited Lake Superior on her seat. She sat in it and was coldly soaked to the skin. He had the whole house to use as a bathroom, and he choose that spot! I couldn’t justify it. I should have known better. Sam had to go.

No Takers

I needed a little help from my friends. I offered Sam as a gift to one friend who loved him. He would sit on a chair and let Sam run all over him and even sit on his head. My friend, actor Kirk Cameron, said he would talk it over with his wife. A couple of days later, he graciously said she wanted a larger dog. I then offered Sam—plus five hundred dollars cash for dog food—to my buddy Mark. Mark politely turned me down. I next offered him to another friend Brad, with a thousand dollars for dog food. He said he would give it some thought and talk it over with his wife. Soon, though, he respectfully rejected my offer. It looked as though Sam was staying.

Disaster Strikes

By his first birthday, believe it or not, there had been some real improvement. However, one day I was working in my garage/workshop when I heard a sound that dog owners everywhere are familiar with. This was about a month after he pulled the lid off some glue and ate half of the contents. Fortunately, it congealed and came back up as a rubber ball about the size of a small child’s fist. This day, Sam was again making the now familiar “I’m getting ready to give dinner back to you” sound. I yelled, “No! Sam, don’t. Go outside, now! Onto the lawn. Now! Go!” He didn’t even look at me. He completely understood that I didn’t want him throwing up in the garage, and quickly headed toward the door. He was being obedient, even in the middle of his suffering. How I love obedience. What a good dog. He ran through the garage door, turned sharp left when he hit the lawn, charged up the steps, through the little doggy door, into the house—and threw up on our living room carpet!

But the worst came about a week after his first birthday. I had spent hours filming in Santa Monica in Southern California. It was even worth the three hours on the freeway to get there and back. I had one great interview that was good enough to make it onto the TV program I cohost. These are few and far between. Returning home, I left the MiniDV on my desk in my home office, planning to “log” it the next day. It really was a great interview.

When I arrived home that day, I found, to my horror, that Sam had chewed the cassette. I tried to save the tape by putting it into a new casing. After two to three hours of meticulous work, I finally did it. I slipped it into the camera to see if it would rewind, and it jammed the camera! I now had no tape, and it cost $250 to get it removed from the camera.

The Lesson

All that to make one important point. This life is full of Sams. You know that. Nothing is simple. We move from one Sam to the next. Everything has some sort of bruising kickback. All any of us want is to be happy. Yet ask any human being if it’s a struggle to hold on to happiness, and he or she will list enough problems to leave you with a problem—depression!

“One day you are singing, “All my troubles seemed so far away,” and the next, you are looking for a place to “hide away.””

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There are minor health issues, aging parents and the complications that go with it, sick kids, financial pressures, marriage problems, doctor’s bills, someone close has cancer, a widow needs help, rebellious kids, headaches that have no real cause, not enough rain, too much rain, insurance companies that won’t pay up, lawsuits, neighbor problems, a rotten boss, mother-in-law problems, addictions, guilt, nightmares, fears, worries, pains, sores, rust, accidents, cockroaches, termites, fleas, pollution, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, endless tribulations, and more waiting in line to hit you tomorrow. One day you are singing, “All my troubles seemed so far away,” and the next, you are looking for a place to “hide away.”

So, what’s going on? Did God create man to have nothing but problems, that, try as he may, he can’t seem to avoid? Then, after the unavoidable pains of old age (even for the rich and famous), it all ends when death comes—that’s unless some terrible disease or horrible accident kills him in his youth, before he even reaches sixty-four. The odds of that happening are pretty high. Every month throughout this sorry world, 490,000 people die of heart disease, 218,000 of cancer, and 116,000 of respiratory diseases. And every year 1,202,000 die in traffic accidents, 399,000 through falls, 365,000 people drown, and over two million die from sexually transmitted diseases.

But there’s good news for those who ask what on earth is happening. This world is not as God planned it. We live in a “fallen” creation. In the beginning, everything was perfectly good. Adam’s “Sam” obeyed. At first, his fruit didn’t have worms. His soil didn’t have weeds. There were no tornadoes, suffering, dentists, disease, decay, or death. All that stuff—along with morning sickness and labor pains—came as a package deal through the rebellion of Adam and Eve. When sin came—the world’s “Sam”—so did the Genesis curse and all the pain and problems we see every day (see Genesis 3).

From, The Beatles, God, and the Bible.