Jack

"He followed me home so I kept him."  

I had always thought that was the stupidest logic.  Why keep an animal because it followed you home?  Then it happened to me...and my view on the subject changed entirely.  I walked to the gravel pit that was about a mile from our farm and in the past had been owned by my grandma's cousin.  I loved that gravel pit.  It was pretty.  The gravel pit was more like a pond surrounded by trees and grass then a gravel pit.  It was summer and I was walking by myself.  Jack was waiting for me at the end of the drive-way leading to the gravel pit.  He sat very straight looking down the drive-way to the road.  I walked around the gravel pit for a little while and he followed me the whole time.  When I decided to go home, he followed me too.  It wasn't easy walking home on the highway with a dog that didn't know the way.  When cars drove past, I stopped on the side of the road and hugged Jack's neck so he wouldn't run into the road and get hurt.  When I got home, I explained to my parents that this black Lab had been waiting for me at the gravel pit.  I had imagined his previous owner driving him there and taking him out of the car.  Telling him to sit and then driving away while Jack watched and waited.  The thought made me sad.  My parents let me keep him.  I bought tennis balls later in the year for him.  He wasn't the greatest at fetch.  He didn't quite understand the concept.  My favorite memory was the day he brought me a dead bird.  The bird was flattened; Jack hadn't killed it but merely found it on the farm somewhere.  He walked up to me smiling with the bird in his mouth and placed it on the ground before me.  It was his present to me.  "Thank you!  That's so disgusting!" I said hugging Jack and he was happy.  The day I left for college was difficult.  Jack nipped at an afghan that a friend had made for me.  I told Jack that I had to go away but that I would come visit him and Mom and Dad would take good care of him.  It was harder to say good-bye to Jack than my family.  I couldn't talk to him on the phone.  Sometime while I was away that first year, Jack ran away.  My dad's dog ran with him.  And I never saw him again.  Looking back Jack's entrance and exit in my life were quite similar: unexplained and seemingly out of nowhere.  But I think Jack came when I needed him most and left when I needed him less.