Our Faithful Sam!

Tragedies happen every day of our life. Some in different ways than others. Unfortunately not all of our posts are going to be happy ones. Today our family has gone through a tragedy of our own. Today our faithful family friend Sam, our dog, was killed. He was hit by a car.
My parents neighbors had friends who weren't very kind to Sam, they would shoot him with BB guns. It got to the point that every pickup truck that came into or out of their driveway he would chase after it. Today he ran out of my parents yard, to chase one of the trucks and ran right in front of another car. He limped into the pasture, and laid down. Our family knelt down beside him and hugged him and told him we loved him. He died in our arms. Mikaeli has taken Sam's death really hard today. Kaleb and Kaerli just don't understand what has happened. It was really hard for Dan and I as well.
He has been a member of our family for 4 years. We got him when he was an enormously fat puppy. We got him with his sisters Minnie and Daisy. He was the best out of all three of them. Minnie and Daisy got really vicious and we had to take them to the pound, Sam on the other hand was more protective of our children. He grew up with them, he loved them. If one of the kids cried he would get really upset and come running to "Save them", and if we didn't pay attention, he would bark at Dan and I until we listened to the kids crying. He was a very good dog.
We have housed Dan's parents dog Doobie for the last two months, and we had to take him back because it was just too hard on all of us. Doobie is a good dog, but he isn't as close to the kids as Sam was.
I think that it will be a little while before we will be able to have another dog at our house. For me it was really hard, not only because he was a family pet, but it was hard, because I have already watched a family pet suffer and die. The kids were able to tell Sam that they loved him and were able to tell him good-bye before he died. All of the kids cried while he was dying, but only Mikaeli really understands what happened. Kaleb has been telling a lot of people that Sam died, but he doesn't really understand what that means. Unfortunately he will.