Samantha Martin searching for lost puppy she got after cancer treatments
A woman in central Newfoundland bought herself a puppy to celebrate the end of her cancer treatments, but her beagle Sophie has been missing since Sunday.
Samantha Martin, from Lewisporte, decided to pick up a puppy to mark the end of a particularly tough year of cancer treatments.
Martin, 22, went with her family to pick the dog up in mid-November. But on Sunday, Sophie the beagle went missing.
"When I first got diagnosed in 2011 with neuroblastoma cancer, they were always saying, 'What is one thing you wanted?' and I said 'I want a puppy,' because I want something that depends on you like I depended on everyone else at that time."
When she was 19 years old, Martin was diagnosed with neuroblastoma and went in for surgery. A year and a half went by, when her doctor noticed something on an MRI scan — the cancer had come back.
Martin had surgery right away and three tumours were removed. She had six rounds of chemo starting in January, a stem cell transplant, and then 12 rounds of radiation — which she says "completely destroyed" her ovaries.
"That was the hardest part, I think. Being told, 'You can't have kids,' but being at this age now, I'm 22, where everybody is having families, everybody's getting engaged, that was just the worst part of it. So I said, if this doesn't make me want to have my own little puppy, my own little family of my own — that's pretty much what pulled on my heartstrings."
Shortly after her treatments finished, Martin saw a post on NL Classifieds for three female beagle puppies who would soon need a home — this is when she first met Sophie.
"My heart dropped [when I first saw her]. In the midst of all this, there is a little bit of happiness," she said.
Not just a dog
"And I mean, it's just a dog. Anybody can say, 'Oh, it's just a dog,' but to me, it was me recovering from something that tried to kill me, overcoming the biggest obstacle of my life, and then have a reward at the end of it was something I loved so much."
But on Sunday, the dog ran off when Martin's mom tried to let her in.
"When she [Sophie] was done her business, mom went to unhook her and she kind of snapped at mom's hand, and mom's kind of scared of dogs anyway so mom pulled back her hand and shrieked, I guess, out of fright, and so did Sophie, and she ran down the driveway and ran out towards the road, not to be seen again."
Martin said she rounded up her friends and anyone she knew with a dog and scoured the woods all day, but found no trace of Sophie.
She posted flyers around town, and started a Facebook group to try to get the word out about her missing puppy.
"I thought she was either dead or somebody took her, because I got a phone call and a text from somebody that I don't even know saying they were driving from Loon Bay up towards Lewisporte, and they seen a blue car pick up a beagle puppy, so that's the only lead I got so far."
Martin said she wouldn't have any hard feelings if someone found her and wanted to keep her, but she wants her dog back.
"If somebody brought her forward and said, even said they were thinking about keeping her or whatever, there would be no hard feelings at all. I would say, 'Thank you for coming forward, being honest, taking care of her while you had her, and here's the reward.'"
