06/24/2024
Greetings! I know it has been a long time since I posted here and I wanted to take this
chance to explain my absence, as I feel I owe it to the membership, since this has always been
a supportive community, and since I have nothing but respect for our members. I am not posting
this so trolls can argue, or attack me. I am not disclosing everything, so there will be many
details left out. This is on purpose. Please be respectful.
This post will be a bit long and will cover a lot of personal aspects as well as rescue. I
am only going to write this out once, for both my personal page, as well as my rescue pages, so
bear with me. You will see how it is all rescue related, overall.
I have sat down dozens of times to write this all out over the past 2 years, but the hits
just kept coming, so it was never a good time. Every time I have tried, I end up getting lost in the
details, making it a 20-page novel. Between that and having watched how toxic social media
has grown over recent years, I have decided to just rip the band-aid off, and spit it all out, in
brief fashion, and reserve the details for myself. I do not owe anything to anyone, I just hope
that getting this all out will not only be cathartic, but to act as a good new starting point going
forward.
During the height of Covid in 2020, I stayed working full time, and traveling the country,
rescuing dogs, bringing them home, and then taking them all over the country to their new
homes. Unfortunately, my wife, Samantha was furloughed from work for 4 months, and the lack
of structure, and the isolation took a toll on her wellbeing.
Her having been a long-time drinker, this period of staying home all day, and not having
any schedule, allowed her drinking to progress in ways that neither of us would fully understand
for years to come. It had begun to affect her cognitively and was causing her mood and
demeanor towards me to change drastically when she was drinking, which began to take a toll
on our marriage.
In early 2021, my wife was having issues with her memory, and general health, and it
was causing her problems at work, which in turn made her drink more, making her condition
deteriorate even more.
At the end of Feb. she accidentally left our front door open, letting several of our personal dogs
out, when she left to go to work. This caused trouble with the city, that had recently annexed our
housing addition, causing them to issue me a deadline to get into compliance with their 3-dog
limit within 6 months. They did not allow any exceptions, and did not recognize rescue, or
kennel licensing. (I had bought this house a few years before I got involved in rescue, so it was
not a consideration at that time.)
After some discussion we decided it was best to remodel and sell our home and find a
better fit, rather than to shut down the rescue I had been working to build. There was no way in
hell I was going to surrender the dogs that I had saved and nursed them back to health.
This turned into a complete remodel of our home. This process took about a total of 10
months of working 20-22 hr. days, EVERY DAY, between working my full-time job, taking care of
a rescue full of dogs (averaging 9-12 dogs at all times), taking care of anything my mother
needs with her house and vehicles, and then working evenings and weekends remodeling the
house myself.
My wife was staying with her mother thru the remodel, as she had been there off and on
for months taking care of her mother after a major heart surgery.
As can be expected, the separation while I was working on the house, with her at her
mom’s, eventually started to take a heavy toll on our relationship. Within the first 2 months of the
remodel, she had quit her job and was just drinking at her mom’s house full time.
Her health had started to spiral downward pretty quickly. In late July I staged an
intervention for my wife, trying to get her to get help, and beat this thing. She was furious with
me for doing that, and apparently, which I found out much later, was the catalyst for her family
completely turning against me. So as time went on, my wife and her family got nastier and
nastier to me. I was told it was unfair of me to ask her to quit drinking.
In March of 2022 we sold our home, doubled what we paid for it, and were ready to
move on. Unfortunately, her continued drinking, and increased hostilities towards me just
continued to grow. So instead of finding a new place and starting over, we just split the money
from the sale, and she continued to live with her mother, and later her Sister In Law, and 2
nephews, while I began the search for my next home.
Attempts to reconcile our relationship went nowhere, with our discussions always
devolving into talking points of how horrible I was being to her. Things were fine when she was
sober, and then things were NOT fine when she was intoxicated, which by this time was pretty
much constant. We were still talking regularly, and still civil, as long as I caught her in that
window. This was my wife, so I was not giving up. I just figured we were going to have to find
our way thru it and eventually we would beat it, as we had done everything else in our 20 years
together.
On December 6 th , 2022 I received a phone call from an unknown number. Turned out it
was an insurance company, and they were asking questions that didn’t make any sense. I went
straight to my wife’s work to find out WTF that call was. When I got there, no one was telling me
anything, until her boss came in and pulled me into the back room. It was then that I learned
that on Nov. 25, 2022 my wife went missing. No one knew where to look, because apparently,
she had stormed out of where she was staying 2 weeks earlier and no one knew where she
went. No one called me.
On Nov. 26 th , her mother and sister-in-law filed a Missing Persons report with the
PD…No one called me…
On Nov. 27 th , Sam was found unresponsive, and was rushed to the hospital, where they
tried for 8 hours to get her to respond. No one called me…
I found out that my wife of 20 years, my best friend, my partner, the love of my life, who I
adored, who went missing, was found and rushed to the hospital, died in the saddest, most
tragic, most gut wrenching, heart breaking, but predictable, very preventable death I have ever
heard of, and I was never given the chance to see her or say “Goodbye”. I only found out 10
days after the fact, because an insurance company happened to call me.
I was informed that her mother had told her boss, and the PD to not tell me
anything…EVER. I still don’t understand why the PD would not reach out to me when the
Missing Person report was filed. I thought that was SOP…
For the first 6 months after her passing, I was kind of a crazed madman. I ran the whole
roller coaster of emotions, and fought like hell to not let this kill me as well. It became a very
dark time for me personally.
There were a lot of other facets to her passing that needed some clarification, and I was
locked in like a dog with a bone, chasing down leads and digging up details, as all I was left with
was partial facts and unanswered questions, as even at this point, I had still not heard anything
from anyone in my wife’s family. In fact, almost all of her family had been completely kept in the
dark as well.
No one ever published an obituary, there was no funeral or anything. By the time I
actually had found out she had passed, she had already had an autopsy, been cremated, her
ashes returned to her mother, and all of her personal checking and savings accounts had all
been wiped clean.
I ended up having a memorial gathering for my wife’s closest friends and my family. Her
memorial was held on our 20 th anniversary in March of 2023.
After 6 months, her autopsy and toxicology reports were released by the coroner’s office,
which finally shed light on my wife’s final days. Of course her body was very sick from years of
heavy drinking, and a lot of the findings were expected, but when she died, she actually didn’t
have ANY alcohol in her system. Her liver had completely metabolized her last drinks. Instead,
she was found to have a full dose of Ambien, that her mother had given her. It was still in her
blood, after what turned out to be a full 72 hours after she ingested it at her mother’s house
Thanksgiving night. The Ambien had apparently shut her liver completely down, and stopped
metabolizing the drug within just a few hours after ingestion, which had left her in an Ambien
induced intoxicated, dream like state. With the lack of alcohol in her system, knowing the time
frame of when she drank last, how long the liver takes to metabolize alcohol, and the levels of
the med in her system, actually painted a very thorough picture of what happened, as well as
shined light on all of the secrecy around her death. Her death was listed as due to
“Complications from Chronic Alcoholism”, but the details filled in the blanks as to what that
“Complication” was.
In the year since that revelation, I have been working thru my grief, by trying to gather as
many personal items of hers as I can, and I have been spreading her ashes at all of our favorite
places, hoping that she can finally rest in peace. Just 2 weeks ago I revisited the waterfall we
were married at, on our anniversary date, and spread some of her ashes, as I did last year on
the same date.
All the while this was all going on, as I stated before, I still had a full rescue full of dogs,
that regardless of what I was going through, they still all needed their care. They had needs that
had to be met daily, and I credit that situation, and those dogs with saving my life. I am not sure
I would have made it through all of this without their unconditional love and my daily list of
chores.
Through all of this, I ended up losing my big house, with the big yard, and all of the
room, so I had to scale back on my rescuing, just due to space limitations. While I scaled it
back, I have still been rescuing, rehabbing, and rehoming pups the entire time, just on a smaller
scale. With my current situation, I have a much smaller area to work with, so my daily chores
include taking a truck load of pups to a local dog park that I am allowed to use at night, to run
them, work with them, train them, and socialize them, and to exorcise their demons, which helps
them sleep each night.
During the height of my life falling apart, I ended up missing a filing deadline on my
501c3 taxes, which allowed it to expire, so I have not been asking for any help or donations
since May of 2021. I have been carrying and covering all of the day to day, month to month, and
annual expenses out of pocket since. I am hoping to get all of the 501C3 resolved soon, so we
can work on increasing our reach.
Whew!!! Ok, so now that that is all out in the open, going forward, I am finally in a place
where I am seeing light at the end of the tunnel, and finally starting to look forward in life, and
am now trying to rebuild my life, and to continue saving as many Boxers as I can. While I am not
currently able to take in all of the dogs that come across the feed, I am hoping to get this whole
ball rolling again, and help all that we can. I am inviting all of you to come back in, so we can all
work together to make a difference in all of these poor pups’ lives. I am not looking for these
rescue pages to just be another page to share every one of the thousands of pups that come
across all of the pages every day, but rather to try to aim it at the ones that we CAN help.
While I am limited on space currently, I am able and willing to drive anywhere in the
country to save a pup. If my ability to travel makes it possible to save a pup, and to fill a hole in
a home somewhere, then I am all about it. The only limitation will be the actual cost of
gas/travel. Luckily my vet gives me great rates on vetting, so hopefully we can put this all back
in play and save some pups.
While my space is limited now, I am currently working on clearing and fencing a nice big
piece of land way out in the country, that I bought this past year. My hopes are to be able to
have the first building erected on that land later this year. Once that shell is up, then it will be all
out chaos, with kennels being the first features built. It will be our own little Boxer haven,
surrounded by nothing but miles and miles of wheat fields in all directions.
So with that…I extend my sincerest apologies to our entire membership, as well as my
personal friends and family, for my absence, and my lack of responsiveness. To each of you, I
am sorry, but I am hopeful that some of you are still following this page, and that we can fire this
bad boy back up, and start making a difference again.
And personally, to those few folks who have known what happened the whole time, and
who helped me get thru the worst time of my life, who reached out to check on me, who kept
inviting me to functions, who were there to help with logistics, and especially to my mother
Karen LaPlant, I want to extend my heartfelt, most sincere THANK YOU, as I am not sure I
would still be standing today without you. To those who were there, you know who you are, and
I will be forever grateful, and will never forget. And to those who I thought were friends/family,
who I reached out to for help, and got no response, I will never forget that either.
Brock
Boxer Rescue Of Central Kansas-B.R.O.C.K.
Boxer Rescue Of America
Non-Profit Boxer Rescue and Advocacy group.
