Samson the Flatulent

On my walk today I found myself wishing I had a dog to take with me. This brought to mind a memory from the year I was an international volunteer on the island of Palau. My roommate and I decide we needed a regular exercise routine, and so for the period of about a month we regularly got up at 5 a.m to go walking. We chose to go so early for a couple reasons; It gave us plenty of time to exercise and still get ready for school on time, and since the sun had not yet come up, it was the coolest part of the day.

Since it was still dark and there were wild dogs, not to mention we were young women, we decided it would be best to have some sort of protection for ourselves. So, we would take our friends' black lab, Samson, with us. Looking back I'm not sure why we thought that Samson would be good protection, since he was really the type of dog that would kill you with love. Luckily he never had to prove to us whether or not he had that fighter instinct in him. He did, however, prove something else to us. Samson was the most flatulent dog I had ever seen.

Each morning we would head up the hill to our friends' house, and Samson would greet us excitedly. We would put the leash on and take off on our walk. Samson would prance in front of us as if he were a king and we were his courtiers. With each step he would exude squeaky farts, blissfully unaware of his gastrointestinal problem.

Unfortunately, my roommate and I both got sick, which successfully put an end to our exercise routine. But we didn't stop loving that dog.