A Tribute to Sam and Salsa

Hello Livvie-lovers,

If you have kept up with the progress of the search for Olivia, you know we would be hopelessly lost - there basically wouldn't be any viable search to follow - if it weren't for Pure Gold Pet Trackers:  Sam Connelly, who is a professional pet tracker, and Salsa, who is, well, also a professional pet tracker, of the canine variety. Salsa can find a scent up to a month old, and her expertise has led her to recover hundreds and hundreds of pets. She and her sisters, Briana and Abby, have recovered over one hundred pets already this year.  I suggested to Sam that she make a collage of pictures of all the pets Salsa has recovered, but she said there were way, way too many for that to be feasible.  (I recognize the effusive character of this praise and, no, I'm not being paid to post this; but it still doesn't adequately express how impressed I have been with their work and how grateful I am for it!)  Salsa's professional credentials range well beyond pet tracking (as do Sam's, for that matter):  before she tracked pets, she did search-and-rescue work, and she's a certified therapy dog as well.

Even apart from her work, though, she is a wonderful girl in her own right:  she's beautiful, super-sweet, affectionate, goofy, graceful, vivacious, etc. (I could go on and on and on and still not capture how great she is, but those of who have met her get it.)  She's eleven years old but, judging by the way she acts, I would guess that she would be about five.  She's an absolute joy to be around. Another aspect of knowing her that I love is getting to know the incredible bond between Salsa and Sam.  They have the usual happy relationship between a dog and her human, but it's intensified because they spend so much time together.  (I have the luxury of spending basically all day every day with my little Leah and I am absolutely, hopelessly addicted to her!)  Adding to this the fact that they collaborate in their work, one can at least begin to imagine the strength of that bond.  They are so devoted to each other - it's really inspiring.  They share a mutual love and respect, but each has her challenges:  Salsa can be what Sam calls "hard of listening;" and Sam is permanently stuck at what she calls "the dumb end of the leash."  Here's a picture that really captures Salsa's personality as well as her beauty.

Beautiful Salsa

So that's the good part. Basically everything about Salsa is the good part. The only parts of her that aren't good, that are actually very bad, are the cancerous tumors.  As many of you know, she was diagnosed with lymphoma last year. Trooper that she is, though, she toughed out chemotherapy and beat the cancer!  She was in complete remission when she was unlucky enough to develop melanoma.  Amazingly, she beat that too and went into remission again.  Unfortunately, the cancer recurred.  Even more discouraging, it's the less treatable melanoma, not the lymphoma, that came back.  (Melanoma is more resistant to chemotherapy than lymphoma, so this diagnosis has a worse prognosis.)  She developed many new lesions that basically didn't respond to the treatment.  She kept working for months, but then had to retire when she developed a lesion on a muscle in her shoulder that made wearing her tracking harness painful.  She hates not working! She loves her job and gets really frustrated when she doesn't get to do it.  Fortunately, each time one of her sisters get to do a track and she doesn't, she doesn't know that she's retired - Sam says Salsa just thinks it's not her turn.  Recently, however, she has taken a serious turn for the worse.  She gets thinner and sicker every day and the lesions are now in her lungs.  She does have pain medication, which works but makes her sleep a lot.  We have been trying to enjoy the time she has left and make it as good as it can be for her.

Salsa loves her mama!

I am a proud member of the Salsa Fan Club (that makes it sound more organized than it is, which is not at all).  As such, and out of gratitude to Sam for all of her incomparable work, tireless efforts, and constant help  with the Olivia search, I wanted to get them something.  As a retirement gift for Salsa and sympathy-to-be gift for Sam, Beth (Sassafras's mama) and I arranged for Salsa to have a photo shoot with a professional pet photographer.  Stephen Bobb of FidoJournalism Pet Photography (fidojournalism.com) met us on a gorgeous day and had a great session with Salsa in which she showed of her beauty, character, and sense of humor.  She let him know how thrilled she was to meet him - typical! - and cooperated, mostly, with the help of some tasty treats.  She's a bit harder to impress now that Sam gives her pretty much everything she wants to keep her happy.  She sat for some of the pictures, but preferred the parts in which she got to play with her mama, swim, and even track a little.  The pictures in this post are from the session (surprise - they're not from my cell phone), which I got from the photographer's facebook page. (www.facebook.com/fidojournalism)

Here's a link to the general website:  http://www.fidojournalism.com  and to all of the proofs from Salsa's session:  http://stephenbobb.zenfolio.com/salsa  (password: Salsa12)
I've never had a session with a professional pet photographer before, but it's hard for me to imagine better pictures of this wonderful girl and her mama.  (I highly, highly recommend Stephen and his work!)

As you might guess, pet photography is not cheap, so other fans of Salsa have offered to contribute.  Stephen made the incredibly generous gesture of donating the fee for the session either to the charity of Sam's choice or to Pure Gold itself.  We will still pay this fee to him then Sam can direct it from there.  What we are trying to do now is solicit contributions so that Sam can buy prints once she gets the proofs.  I know there are many, many Sam/Salsa fans out there, grateful clients, rescue organizations they helps, and others who appreciate what wonderful, often life-saving work Sam and Salsa do.  Unfortunately, I do not know who most of them are, much less how to contact them.

All of Livvie's buddies are, of course, welcome to donate; but, whether or not you want to contribute yourself, please pass this information on to anyone else who knows Sam and Salsa and whose contact information you have.  We are going to cover the session fee with the contributions from the people who have already helped, but we would really like to collect more so that Sam can order some prints.  Rather than getting a number of individual gift certificates from FidoJournalism, I think it will be simpler and more efficient for everyone just to send contributions directly to Sam (at puregoldpettrack@aol.com) via Paypal.  I don't want anyone to feel pressured, but I know there are many others who would want to know about this and this is the best mechanism I have to spread the word.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation in contributing or passing this message along so that we can make this gift a fitting reflection of the strength of our love for Salsa and gratitude to Sam.