2 Women Take Care of Sam the Hermit, Man’s Best Friend

People scare Sam.

It was people who abandoned him alongside a farm road, where he has stayed put and waited, winter and summer, for five years.

It was people who shot out his left eye with a pellet gun. People who stole the doghouse that some folks set up for him by the roadside. People who hit him with beer cans from passing cars.

Sam learned to run, and Sam learned to hide.

And today, after five years, someone finally may lay a gentle hand on Sam the Hermit, the funny-looking German shepherd of Tranquillity, Calif.

He’s Got an Appointment

It will have been more than a year since Eunice Bandoni and Donna Blackwood started taking turns feeding him every noon, but finally, Sam will visit the vet.

On Saturday, the women, who live outside the Fresno County farm town of Tranquillity, population about 2,000, tried to slip a little tranquilizer into his meal, figuring that while he was out, they would take him to a vet who would fix up that eye, and whatever else needs fixing.

But the plan didn’t work.

“We put several different drugs in his food but we were acting very cautiously on the drug doses we were giving him,” said veterinarian Paul Toste, who joined Bandoni and Blackwood in trying to capture Sam. “We got to a place where he was sedated but he wasn’t out and he just wouldn’t eat anymore.”

Toste said they will try again today, and will hope for better luck.

“We’re looking forward to giving him a little pat while he’s out,” Bandoni said wistfully. She and Blackwood have never gotten closer than four or five feet to the reclusive and skittish Sam, who often turns his back when they put down the food, “like he’s saying, ‘Go away and leave me alone.’ ”

This eye surgery isn’t a handout, though; Sam isn’t a charity case any more.

Sam the abandoned is suddenly Sam the dog of substance--$1,017 in his own checking account, and his own fan mail, from locals who read about him in a Fresno Bee column, and sent cash.

“It’s a very good response,” said Bandoni--and a gratifying one to the women.

“For years, in the summertime, when it was warm, he would lay on the side of the road watching cars. He gave you the impression he was waiting for somebody. We just thought someone threw him out,” Bandoni said. “It’s very sad. So you see why we take care of him.”

Sam would scare them to death back then, ambling across the road busy with trucks from the melon and beet fields. He fended for himself, hunting by day and sleeping at night, in the ditch or beneath the willow tree.

But more than a year ago, when his eye was shot out by what they think was a pellet gun, the two women became worried. “We were afraid he wouldn’t survive,” Bandoni said.

Food Spiked

So for two weeks, twice a day, they slipped an antibiotic into some dog food and set it out with a pan of water. And even when the infection cleared up, “we just kept doing it,” Bandoni said.

Joe Bandoni’s co-workers with the irrigation district built Sam a cozy doghouse. It was stolen after three days. So the women and their friends put up little shelters--one high up, under the willow tree, for when it rains in the winter, and another one, down the ditch, out of sight.

A summer home and a winter home, one with warm cushions and the other with that sheepskin coat that Leo Blackwood hadn’t worn in a couple of years, and his wife didn’t think he’d miss. Joe Bandoni joked to his wife that one of these days, he is going to go live with Sam.

Sam may be warming up, at last, Bandoni said. “He recognizes us and our car,” and “the last couple of weeks he’s even wagged his tail. Before that he had his tail between his legs.”

Homely but Loved

He is a funny-looking dog, to be charitable, “so homely,” with his oddly cocked ear and spotted legs. But the women find him wonderful.

And so do people in the San Joaquin Valley, whose dollars prove it.

“We’re going to use it all for his needs, and when he’s finished, if we haven’t used it up, we’re going to give it to the SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) in Fresno,” Bandoni said. They hope that the vet can do his work quickly and they can spirit Sam back, so “he won’t know he’s been away.”

And “if he ever becomes friendly,” Bandoni said, “one of us will take him home.”