Just finished reading Rescuing Sprite. As a owner of 3 unwanted dogs, it amazes me how these animals enter and change our lives. A friend, who grew up on a farm on the Wash coast, told me of a dog he owned. The dog a stray, wandered on to the farm and befriended the children as they played. He would always show when the kids went out to play. They were poor but they fed the dog table scrapes. The dog slept outdoors in the woods. His father,who was very stern, thought the dog served no purpose on the farm and also was evil because it had one white eye. He tried to chase the dog away by kicking the dog, hitting it with a shovel, and even shooting at it a couple of times. There was a large stream on the farm with a deep hole the kids could swim in in the summer. In the winter,however, it usually overran its banks. One day his younger sister came home muddied, scratched, and with her clothes torn. The nest day his father followed the childern out to see what happened. His sister was not with the other kids, He found her standing in the water trying to walk out further in to the stream. A few steps further and she would have fallen into the hole and been swept away. The dog had her by her dress and was pulling and dragging her back. The dog who usually ran away at the sight of the father, did not let go until his father picked her up. He told the childern to bathe the dog and when they went home they found his father had made a bed for the dog in the kitchen. Afterwards, dog and his father became inseparable. He would always feed the dog from his plate. Later, he apologised to the childern for the way he had treated the dog, for he was sure that God had sent the dog to protect his family. My friend said that was the first and only time he had ever heard his father apologise for anything.

H from AR