Samuel Reference Sheet 2013

Decided to make some more reference sheets, starting with my Balto characters since they already have typed bios on BaltoSource; I just have to copy-and-paste.

Colors at the top are fur, nose, and collar; colors on the side are eyes. His inner ears are the same color as his undercoat.


Character Type: Fancharacter; based on Balto by Universal Studios

Name: Samuel | Inspired by the real Balto's namesake, Samuel Balto
Gender: Male

Personality: Saumel is an awkward, skittish little husky who prefers to stay away from others. Many dogs see him as antisocial or even mad. He himself is a bit of a mental wreck; he's very paranoid and often finds himself overthinking. He tends to pace often using small, twitchy steps that seem to match his mental state. Few understand him, but he doesn't mind as excessive contact with others drains him.

He does have a certain attachment to his owner, but it's not as famously strong as other dog-owner bonds. He relies mainly on her for food and occasionally comfort, bur it's not unlike him to wander off from the town for days to be alone. His owner is well aware of this and stopped making a big deal of it when he was younger.

When Samuel is out in the woods, he spends a lot of time pacing around the trees in his skittish gait, taking random observations on his surroundings. Many of them, of course, he forgets, but some of them stick with him. He has s plethora of random facts and observations floating in his head, along with many elaborate ideas that he isn't quite brave enough to try. All these randoms things in his head, though, his emotional judgment is sometimes clouded.

He is also very twitchy and alert in the woods and will often duck for cover at the slightest sound. Being rather frailly-built for his breed, he is not comfortable with physical fighting. His paranoia sometimes gets the best of his and he can stay in a hiding place for hours, even days, at the extremes, sleeping there through the nights.

When severely stressed, Samuel has a tendency to either stay in hiding too long with a racing pulse or to pace in tireless circles until something snaps him out of it, neither of which are very healthy. If it gets too extreme, he himself simply snaps and becomes temporarily unstable. When he regains himself, he angrily blames himself for just about everything, adding the trauma to the floating facts and experiences in his head and thus slipping further into "insanity".

Samuel is neither a follower nor a leader; he is a loner. He prefers to work with his own mind and his own mind alone. He is uninterested in following other's opinion as well as sharing his.

History: Samuel was born to a mother owned by a professional breeder elsewhere in Alaska. Even as a pup, he was small (though not quite considered a runt), skittish, and awkward. The breeder noticed his undesirable qualities and wasn't sure whether or not to sell the pup. However, as it so happens he did know a slightly older, rather lonely lady who was looking for a companion, so he invited her to meet the pup.

The lady accepted and came over the next day. The breeder explained the issues and his concerns and allowed the lady to spend some time with the pup to see if she would be ok with keeping him. The lady quite enjoyed spending time with Samuel, describing his awkwardness as simple "shyness" that he could be taught to overcome, and he agreed to keep the pup. The breeder sold him to her at a greatly-discounted price, and as soon as Samuel was old enough, he came home with her.

The young husky never did grow over his "shyness" like the old lady had wanted him to, but she loved him openly and he did form a small attachment to her, coming to her for comfort especially in his younger months. When he was about 1, the pair of them moved to Nome. The move was uncomfortable for antisocial Samuel. He had been fairly uncomfortable already with the dogs and people he had known since birth, and now he was thrown into a whole new mix of unfamiliar faces. For the first few days he stuck close to his owner, the only one he had any trust in, but over those days there were several humans and occasionally their dogs over to greet the new residents, which stressed Samuel. He began taking longer and longer trips out into the more feral areas. Knowing that he was still "shy" and remembering what the breeder said, and noticing that he always came home eventually, she didn't stress to hard about it, simply continuing to pour out her loyalty to the dog.

Samuel made it a habit to go out into the woods whenever he needed to chill out, which was quite often as he was very easily unnerved and paranoid by life in the town. He could stay out there for days at longest, but a need for food and inability to hunt always drove him back home. However, even while unwinding outside, he was very on-edge and his heart raced easily. The slightest unusual sound could send him racing into the bushes wide-eyed and terrified.

It was this very flaw that led him to meet Aniu. He had been wandering alone one day, observing the waxy needles of the evergreen trees, when a rustle sounded from near behind him. Samuel froze, staring in the direction, all muscles bunched in preparation to flee. The sound came again and flee he did, darting off into a thicket of leaves and uncomfortable thistles. The source of the rustles emerged from the bush, a little bear cub wandering in search of berries. Samuel began to hyperventilate; he had never seen a bear before, but he could sense quite well that this was a predator. When the cub's mother followed, his heart rate quickened even more, and Samuel blacked out.

Samuel wasn't sure how much time has passed while he was out, but when he woke up, he was no longer in the thicket tangle. Rather, he was stretched out in a clearing, surrounded by...wolves! He panicked, but was too weak to run, so he laid there breathing heavily, staring wide-eyed around the clearing. He heard voices calling "he's awake!" "Get Aniu!" "Get Nava!"

The next thing he knew, he was being stared at readily by thin, yellow eyes mounted atop a snow-white face. He whimpered nervously, not really being able to do much else. But the white wolf held the gaze. She introduced herself as Aniu, the one who had pulled him free from the tangles, and asked him why he was afraid. He didn't get much of an answer out, and Aniu decided to leave him be.

The pack fed Samuel while he was still too weak to do much, and he sometimes caught Aniu, who seemed to be more of a wise advisor than an actual leader, speaking with who he came to recognize as Nava, the actual leader. He himself, however, didn't interact much with the pack, trying to avoid direct contacts and conversations. As soon as he was strong enough to run, he fled back to his home.

His owner, who had been worried, as this had been the longest that Samuel had ever been away from the house, welcomed him graciously. He didn't leave the indoors for nearly two weeks after that traumatic experience, but he did have over his fair share of brief panic attacks in which he scratched wood, chewed fabrics, and knocked over many and even broke a few of his owner's possessions. Of course, she was upset, and Samuel felt bad afterwards, bur during the times, it seemed all he could do or think.

A few more years rolled by. Samuel had begun visiting the woods again and was more or less back to the state he'd been in before the visit to the wolves. It was spring, and as they say, love was in the air. While on his walks in the woods, Samuel began to notice--really notice--many pairs of animals becoming mates and having offspring. And then he realized: he wanted that, too. Really wanted it. But all the dogs in town thought he was crazy. He couldn't love anyone.

Then suddenly, through the trees a ways off, he spotted a snow-white coat, and after a moment realized that it was the same wolf he'd met years before whilst passed out in the woods, the advisor, Aniu. His intentions were suddenly drawn to her.

For weeks he followed her from a distance, still too awkward and fearful to say much. Eventually the distance of his followings diminished. Eventually, Aniu approached him and questioned why he'd been so adamantly following her. By instinct Samuel fell low to the ground, but he tried to be confident as he stammered out that he wanted to mate with her. She stared him down, trying to search his motives. After a long and uncomfortable silence for Samuel, she told him that she would consider it overnight and would come back, and she walked away. Samuel, too, turned and scurried off, anxiously awaiting for the white wolf's response.

Aniu thought long and hard about the request. She had never really wanted pups, and it was quite clear that Samuel was more after a lust than a love. In her dreams, she consulted with her spirits, and she realized that mating with this dog may not seem the wisest decision, but that the pups that resulted would one day be crucial to the survival of not only wolves, but to other creatures--humans--as well. (Of course, she did not know the details at the time, but as it would turn out, their son, Balto, would go on to save the town of Nome, and their granddaughter, Aleu, would ensure the survival of her pack.) So when Samuel came back, she agreed to mate, and they did.

Samuel only saw Aniu on-and-off as the unborn pups grew and eventually were born, and his visits became less and less frequent as a sense of "what-have-I-done" began to dawn on him. He began to go a bit crazy and grow less stable as his mind crammed with thoughts and scenarios.

The first time he saw his pups, they were about one month old, two girls and a boy sticking close to their mother. Aniu introduced them to their father. The firstborn, a girl, was the first to go up and greet him, but as Samuel looked into his daughter's eyes, all his control snapped. In an involuntary and crazed spasm, he snarled and frothed and wound up killing his daughter. Aniu and the other two were left horrified as he turned his gaze towards them, shallow and thoughtless and full of murder. Samuel lunged. Aniu countered, knocking the husky over. She leapt on him in a fury, snarling as the insane dog struggled beneath her grasp, and killed him before he could bring any more harm to their pups.

Unfortunately for her, a hunter had stumbled across the scene as she had made her killing blow and had watched her murder the dog. He quickly took aim and fired, and Aniu, too, fell dead. He managed to get the terrified second daughter, as well. The only survivor was the son, the poor little male named Balto huddling underneath the bush, unseen by the hunter. He was found by Boris a few hours later, who took pity on the poor thing and raised him. The experience had been so traumatic to Balto that his mind almost completely discarded the memory. He grew up with Boris and eventually became the hero we know him as today.


Balto and any other canon characters mentioned (c) Universal Studios
Samuel and artwork (c) me.