“Please, Mom, please!” I squealed.  I was eight years old and excited. It was 2008 and my family wanted to get a dog.  At least most of us did, since my dad wasn’t too crazy about it. My mom was set on getting a beagle. My brother, Owen, and I weren’t really concerned what breed it would be. We knew of a shelter in Port Huron, which happened to be where my grandma and grandpa live. One day when we were going to visit them, both of my parents must have been in extremely good moods, because one of the stops we made was at the animal shelter. At first glance, the shelter looked like a prison, although I could see its friendly parts behind the plain, cinder block walls. We looked at all the dogs, focusing closely on the beagles.
“Can you take out this one for us?” My mom asked one of the nice workers at the shelter, pointing to a sweet, small, multi-colored pup. He took the dog out of its cage, which looked more like a big glass box.
“This is Sampson,” said the worker gently. Sampson was brown, black and white all over. He had big ears, big eyes and a small body. I thought he was the cutest little thing. I fell in love with him and Owen and I immediately began begging my mom for him.
“Please Mom, we will walk him and feed him and play with him all the time,” we sang in unison.
“Maybe, but don’t get your hopes up too high. A dog is a big responsibility,” my mom replied.
“We know, but we’ll take care of him,” we promised.
My mom continued to put up only a slight resistance, and that’s when I realized she had fallen in love with him too. Much to my amazement, we actually walked out of the shelter that day with a dog. I was ecstatic on the inside, but trying to play it cool on the outside just in case this was just a dream. It all seemed too good to be true. We took Sampson back to my grandparent’s house to let him run around outside. We soon noticed that Sampson seemed a bit lethargic and hesistant, but we all figured he was just adjusting to new surroundings and new people. He wasn’t eating or drinking much either and his atypical puppy behavior started to leave us all a bit uneasy. He continued to lay low the rest of the day, but soon began having periodic coughing fits.  My grandma started to get a bit concerned, so she did a quick internet search on “irregular puppy behavior”. We didn’t want to overreact, but this didn’t seem like the same puppy we had picked up from the shelter just hours earlier.  It turns out his behavior was consistent with a disease called Parvo. Parvo is a deadly disease that comes on quickly and often without warning causing dogs (usually puppies) to stop eating and eventually die. We started to get a bit more worried, but were still convinced everything would be all right. We kept a watchful eye on him the rest of the evening, since believing anything bad was unthinkable.
When we got home to Royal Oak that night, we put Sampson in his little crate and went to bed. It had been a long day filled with excitement and nerves, and we were all exhausted. The next morning we decided to take Sampson to the vet, for a quick check-up, and to hopefully ease our worried minds. We told the veterinarian about what was going on and she ran a test on him that would tell us if Parvo was an accurate diagnosis.
“Positive,” the vet sighed, when she read us the results. At first I was happy, because I was young and didn't realize that positive meant he had the disease. It seemed as if a positive test should be a good result to my eight old mind. I soon understood how serious it was when she said that they would have to keep Sampson overnight and put him on an IV to deliver food and keep him hydrated. The moment of excitement had suddenly ended and the moment of sadness had begun. I couldn’t sleep that night. I don’t think any of us could, even my dad. Although he hadn’t fully agreed with the decision to get the dog in the first place, he cared about us, and he knew that we cared about Sampson. Of course, he didn’t want our dog to die either, I mean, who would?
When we picked him up the next morning, the vet had told us that although Parvo had no treatment plan, if were able to get him to keep his food and water down, he would have the greatest chance of survival. So as a family, we thought we had come up with a realistic plan to keep Sampson alive. My mom put his “soft food” in a syringe that made his food easier to swallow which is how she fed him and gave him his water several times a day. Keeping him fed and hydrated gave him his best shot for a happy outcome so that was our priority. My mom kept up this schedule for a week, but nothing changed with Sampson’s condition.  On Saturday morning at 5:00 a.m., I heard a weird screeching noise coming from the living room. This woke me up and I figured it was my mom making that noise as she struggled to feed Sampson since he was probably squirming around and making things difficult. I went out in the living room to help her and that’s when she told me that it wasn’t her that was making the noise, it was Sampson. I froze. He was having a seizure. My mom put Sampson on his bed and took him outside. He died immediately and I started sobbing. My dad came out of his room and put his arm around me. We didn’t wake Owen up until he had to get up for school, and then it was his turn to cry. It was so surreal to think that one week ago we thought we had picked up a healthy puppy, when in reality we had been given a dog that was on the brink of coming down with a deadly disease.  Late that night was when we were able to admit that he was in a better place and wasn't suffering. We were still heartbroken, but I guess you could say this took away some of the pain, at least for me.  
A few months later we got a new beagle named Charlie. This time Charlie was healthy, and you better bet we checked. Charlie is still with my family today and we love him very much, although the memory of Sampson, our first beagle puppy, will live in our hearts forever.