My best friend, Cocoa, and I live in a senior-citizen apartment complex in a lovely small town. Cocoa is a ten-year-old poodle(卷毛狗) and I am a sixty-nine-year-old lady, so you can see we both qualify as senior citizens.

Years ago, I promised myself that when I retired I would get a chocolate poodle to share my golden years. From the very beginning, Cocoa has always been exceptionally well-behaved. I never have to tell him anything more than once. He is extremely neat—when taking toys from his box to play, he always puts them back when he is finished. I have been accused of being obsessively neat, and sometimes I wonder if he mimics me or if he was born that way, too.

He is a wonderful companion. When I throw a ball for him, he picks it up in his mouth and gives it back to me. He does many amusing things that make me laugh, and when that happens, he is so delighted that he just keeps it up. I enjoy his company very much.

But almost two years ago, Cocoa did something that challenged comprehension. Was it a miracle or a coincidence? It is certainly a mystery.

One afternoon, Cocoa started acting strangely. I was sitting on the floor playing with him when he started pawing and sniffing at the right side of my chest. He had never done anything like this before, and I told him, “No.” Usually, one “no” is sufficient, but not that day. He stopped briefly, then suddenly ran toward me from the other side of the room, throwing his entire weight—eighteen pounds—at the right side of my chest. He crashed into me and I yelled in pain. It hurt more than I thought it would have.

Soon after this, I felt a lump (肿瘤). I went to the doctors, and after X-rays, tests and lab work were done, they told me I had cancer.

When cancer starts, a wall of calcium(钙) builds to which the lump or cancer attaches itself.

Was Cocoa just aware of what he was doing?

It was a sunny summer morning, the breeze blowing gently. As planned, Jackson took a trip into the remote wilds near Olom Village, in the Sakha Republic, Russia. His four-year-old daughter, Karina, found him leaving and wanted to follow him to give her dad a surprise. She slipped out of the house, with nobody realizing it, even Jackson.

Unfortunately, she walked too slowly on her way and soon she was lost in the vast, dangerous Siberian wilderness. Luckily for her, her dog, Naida, followed Karina just as the girl followed her father. The two suddenly found themselves walking with no one in sight, drifting away from their home as the hours went by.

Night fell. Karina’s father returned home, and it didn’t take long after that for the whole family to realize what had happened. They couldn’t find Karina anywhere. They turned to the police for help immediately. And they took action at once in search of the lost girl.

A whole week had gone by and there was no progress of the rescue in sight. The whole family was stuck in desperation, but Karina’s mum never lost hope. “Many stopped believing that she was alive, but as a mother I felt that she would be found soon.”

In fact, Karina did survive. Although Siberia is an extremely dangerous place even for otherwise fit adults due to its wildlife and climate, she made it. She survived by eating wild fruits and drinking water from nearby rivers, and she faced the freezing nighttime temperatures by cozying up in a bed of grass. Naida did its best too, scaring away the wild animals and keeping each other warm by sleeping close together at night.

After nine days struggling to survive, scared and alone, Karina could only be grateful about one thing: her good friend was by her side. Naida gave its strength, and actively helped the four-year-old to stay alive for that long.

I was doing homework with my friend Ollie at his home when he randomly started scribbling (乱画) a fish. But not just any fish. This fish was riding a skateboard and blowing a bubble that said “I’d rather be skating!”I laughed and drew a sea star saying “Quit fooling around and get to work!”

Just then, Ollie’s grandma Abuela and her friend Mr. Goldberg came into the kitchen. Mr. Goldberg was in charge of the local animal shelter. Abuela poured their tea and inquired about how things were going at the animal shelter. Mr. Goldberg sighed, shaking his head. He explained that not enough people were adopting pets, resulting in too many animals without homes.

Overhearing the conversation, Ollie offered to adopt some excitedly. But Abuela said that one noisy parrot was plenty for this house.

“Blue isn’t noisy,” defended Ollie. “He’s just musical.”

“I’d have a whole farm full of animals if I could,” I said. “But my parents say two cats and a hamster (仓鼠) are enough.”

Mr. Goldberg said he kept trying to attract people to adopt animals, but found it hard to get people’s attention these days. Ollie drew a sad whale, and I wrote the words “Please adopt me” in the shape of a whale spout (喷水). Mr. Goldberg took a look at our drawings and made favorable comments on them, saying that these clever talking animals just might grab people’s attention. And he asked us if we were willing to design a poster for his animal shelter, a proposal we happily accepted. We decided to draw some ideas on our own and meet up again the next afternoon.

That night, when I was sitting in the living room brainstorming ideas for the poster, my little brother brought in our hamster, Mr. Nibbles, to give him a little run-around time. He made a hamster playground out of couch pillows and Mr. Nibbles began to run around merrily.

Suddenly, an idea formed in my mind.

We decided to make both Mr. Nibbles and Blue the stars of the poster.

It was a cold winter night in New York. I was a little scared because I had just moved into a new house; I had seen a mouse. I’m scared of mice. However, the really bad thing about shifting was that I didn’t have even one friend. There was something good, though. In the former house, I had to share a bathroom with other people, which I didn’t like. In this house, I have my own bathroom.

Today was my first day of school, and the streets to school were very nice; they were like ice rinks(溜冰场)covered with snow. When I reached school, I felt nervous as I was entering middle school without a friend. At first there was a history class in which I knew a girl named Alice. Alice had yellow hair, skin which was as white as milk, and eyes as blue as the sky. She looked at me and asked me if I would like to be her friend. She looked sweet and friendly, so I said “yes”. I was enthusiastic, but when we left for break, I saw something that I did not like—some guys were threatening and bullying(欺负)Alice.

On seeing this, I told the guys, “Don’t say that to her. ”

“Who are you to tell me what to say? ” one of the guys said.

Alice felt extremely bad and went running and crying. When she ran away, I tried to follow her, but I could not catch up and lost her. She disappeared into one of the many rooms. After a while of searching, I thought to look in the cafeteria and saw her sitting and crying. Just when I was going to try to calm her, the bell rang, and she hurried away.

The next day when I arrived at school, I didn’t find Alice.

When the police arrived, the guys who were bulling Alice were caught.

Sometimes you can count on (指望) people to do the right thing. When Dave Tally found a backpack with a laptop and an envelope full of cash in 2010, he could have considered it a very lucky day. The homeless man counted $3,300 in the bag, an amount that would make a huge difference in his life. However, as tempting (诱人的) as it was to keep the money, deep down he knew it wasn’t the right thing to do.

Back then, Tally was sleeping in the basements of local churches and trying to save up enough money to fix his only source of transportation: his bike. That money could have bought him, a brand new one. Instead, he turned the bag to his boss at the Tempe Community Action Agency, an organization that helps homeless people in the area find jobs. Tally had been working there part-time.

“Finding the envelope with the cash was just exciting. There were lots of crazy thoughts that went through my head,” Tally told ABC News at the time. “I went into the survival mode for a moment, actually more than a moment, thinking about all the things I could do for myself.”

“I beat myself up pretty hard for even thinking I would spend one cent of that person’s money,” Tally added.

After Tally made up his mind to return the bag, he faced the problem of tracking down its owner. There were no identifiers on the backpack or a way to get into the laptop without a password. But then someone suggested checking the flash drive (闪存盘) that they’d also found inside the bag to see if it held any clues (线索).

It sure did. Arizona State University student Bryan Belanger had uploaded his resume (简历) to the drive, easily providing Tally with his contact information. As it turned out, Bryan Belanger was carrying that cash because he was buying a used car from Craigslist website, and he accidentally left his belongings in a station on the way to work.

Belanger was regretful for his carelessness and thought his backpack was gone forever.

Tally said the day he found the money’s rightful owner was the day his life changed.