Thank you for your friend request :-)   I'm happy to hear Sam is doing better.  When you adopt a dog you really don't know what experiences may have prompted certain behavior patterns to develop, but with love, a stable environment and clear guidance they learn to relax and drop some of their defenses. I'm sure he was looking for someone like you.

Thank you for the friend'ing!  Sam is just adorable.  Thanks so much for adopting him.

The lupine ancestry is apparent only in the kitchen, or in the presence of a moving soccer ball.

then you'll be interested to learn that the expressed Fibroblast Growth Factor 4 retrogene responsible for breed-defining chondrodysplasia in domestic dogs contains a silent point mutation absent from the source gene in domestic dogs, but present in wolves from eastern Europe and the Middle east (see "What happened to your dog's legs" in Corgi Jokes).

I don't really know much (just good at faking it... I should run for office or start a hedge fund...?).

Search this site for "ears" or "taping" -- some breeders tape-up the ears if they're slow to stiffen.  The window of opportunity may be past.  I don't know.  Ask Joanna Kimball?  some of the other breeders here?  I know I've seen this discussed here.

Google "Belyaev experiment" "fox".  Floppy ears is a juvenile (neotenic) trait that does not occur in nature, but it's among the juvenile traits that appear with domestication.  I believe some of Belyaev's foxes showed floppy ears, and all they were selecting for was tameness.  This whole suite of juvenile characteristics appears when you select wild animals just for tameness.

Sam looks killer with the floppies, but might hear better with prick ears, and they way they aim them is very expressive.

Ears are usually up by 2 months.  Sometimes you see a corgi with one floppy ear -- very endearing -- if you ever get videos of the ears going up and down, do post them!

I agree, he looks a lot like a purebred pem except for the rounded, floppy ears, but let's see how he is at 1 y.o.  If he ends up with legs just a bit longer than standard, that's my fantasy dog physique -- like an Australian kelpie -- there's a dog on here somewhere, a "border cardi" -- border collie x cardigan.  

He's a real find, you got lucky.  We always wanted a pem with a tail.

your drawings are amazing!

Thats cool that sam has his tail.you don't see that to often

Welcome Maddie and Sam! I love your drawings. Sidney has his tail too, so I love seeing the tailed corgis in your drawings.

What a cool dog.  I love to see Pems with tails.  I'd bet on a lab x Pem mix though, because of the ears.   Are the legs a bit longer than Pems'?

Mixes are supposedly healthier than purebreds, averaging 1 year longer lifespan when you control for size and stuff like that.

Sam reminds me of Lady, a Golden x Pem mix, the dog who first got my wife interested in corgies.