In July, my dad, mom and I flew to Whitehorse to care for my sick old grandfather. We planned to spend two months in the town of my youth.
A few days before we arrived, my grandfather called to say he was being flow n to Vancouver for another operation. My dad and mom had already booked the air tickets and their leave from work, so even though my grandfather wouldn’t be there, we made the trip north anyway.
Grandfather kept a puppy. It was the only companion of my grandfather while we were not in Whitehorse. He had adopted it from a local shelter(two years earlier and renamed him “Scruffy” because it looked untidy. Its fur was messy. Its ears were like two wings when it ran. While we were alone in my grandfather’s house with nothing to do, Scruffy saved us. The dog needed to be walked. Those walks were chances to re-visit where I’d grown up. I had left that small town behind as soon as I finished high school and had rarely visited home. Scruffy and I took my family to the school, where my picture still hung. We walked through the forest where I once rode my bike. With no one to talk to when my parents were occupied with their own business. I found myself chatting with Scruffy. He was too excited to see me. I gave him many nicknames: Scruffster, Scruff-man, Scruffmaster. He would happily respond to them all.
By the fall, we were back in Toronto and my grandfather was back in Whitehorse. My mom and her brothers took turns flying up to take care of him.
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We visited my grandfather again in November.
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After Grandfather’s death, we had to rehome Scruffy.
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“Sophie would make a good therapy(治疗) dog.”
The day my dog trainer said those words, I didn’t even know what a therapy dog was. I certainly had no idea what features my little dog had that would make her a candidate. But why not, I thought, if we can help people in need of some cheering up?
Last week, I accompanied Sophie to a hospital for our first day on the job. In the year and a half I had spent getting her certified, I had learned what to expect. I would bring Sophie into a patient’s room to be a pleaser, and then we would move on. Of course, Sophie herself couldn’t understand her purpose in all of this, but she was always happy to meet new people, and that was enough.
We walked through the wide automatic sliding glass doors and into the hall, where we were met by a nurse who ran the therapy dog program at the hospital. “Welcome,” Sophie, she said. “I’ll be taking you two around today.”
I followed the nurse down the hall. Sophie trotted (小跑) along at my side, just as she had been trained. “We’re a care unit,” the nurse explained. “Most of our patients are seniors.” I knew how important it was for Sophie to be her gentlest. “She was trained and ready for this, I reminded myself.
Up ahead was an old lady making her way down the hall with a walker. A nurse walked beside her, holding on to a gait belt (步态训练带)to keep her steady. We caught up with them, but the patient remained focused on her walker. As we were passing by at a safe distance, the lady turned her walker towards a chair against the wall. “Okay, we’ll stop for a rest,” her nurse said. Once the lady was settled, she pointed a finger at Sophie, as if to say “Please bring me that dog.”
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I picked up Sophie and placed her in the lady’s lap.
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“It’s a wonder! We had thought the lady lost the ability to speak,” the nurse told me excitedly.
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My husband Erik and I had promised the kids a Labrador puppy.
I’d seen the ad at the local hardware store. “Thirteen puppies in all, “Sally, the owner, said when I called. ”There’ re only three left. “I decided to take a look the next day. The boys jumped and shouted excitedly as I copied down directions and hung up the phone.
Early the next morning, still discussing names, we wound our way through the mountains to meet our family’s new best friend. Our boys had simple names: Ike, Sam, Ben, and Dom, so they Preferred simple names like Rosy ,too. Finally, we met the sweet little dog. ” Rosy, “the boys called it softly. Our little puppy cocked her head. ” She likes it,“they cheered and set about making Rosy comfortable for the long drive home. They offered her a chew toy and lifted her up so she could see out the window. They took turns holding her in their arms lovingly and offered her a snack.
Though small, Rosy grew strong and healthy beneath her shiny black coat. And, just as I’d hoped, she was a calming addition to our houseful of noisy boys. But something was wrong. “It’s like she doesn’t know how to play,” Sam commented one day after school. “Dogs have different personalities, just like people,”I said. “Besides, she’s still very young. ” “But her legs aren’t very long, and one eye is smaller than the other,”Ike added, trying to make sense of why Rosy was different from other puppies he’d met.
I looked across the room to where Rosy sat between the boys. The last golden rays of autumn sunshine shone brightly on her face. Sure enough, one eye was misshapen. Not only that, it didn’t glint (闪光) in the afternoon light. I drew in a breath. Rosy, our puppy with a name as short as her four little legs, was blind in one eye.
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Everyone in the room became serious and sad.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Surprisingly, the boys refused to give the little puppy back.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________I was invited to a cookout on an old friend’s farm in western Washington. I parked my car outside the farm and walked past a milking house which had apparently not been used in many years. A noise at a window caught my attention, so I entered it. It was a hummingbird (蜂鸟), desperately trying to escape. She was covered in spider-webs (蛛网) and was barely able to move her wings. She ceased her struggle the instant I picked her up.
With the bird in my cupped hand, I looked around to see how she had gotten in. The broken window glass was the likely answer. I stuffed a piece of cloth into the hole and took her outside, closing the door securely behind me.
When I opened my hand, the bird did not fly away; she sat looking at me with her bright eyes. I removed the sticky spider-webs that covered her head and wings. Still, she made no attempt to fly. Perhaps she had been struggling against the window too long and was too tired? Or too thirsty?
As I carried her up the blackberry-lined path toward my car where I kept a water bottle, she began to move. I stopped, and she soon took wing but did not immediately fly away.
Hovering (悬停), she approached within six inches of my face. For a very long moment, this tiny creature looked into my eyes, turning her head from side to side. Then she flew quickly out of sight.
During the cookout, I told my hosts about the hummingbird incident. They promised to fix the window. As I was departing, my friends walked me to my car. I was standing by the car when a hummingbird flew to the center of our group and began hovering. She turned from person to person until she came to me. She again looked directly into my eyes, then let out a squeaking call and was gone. For a moment, all were speechless. Then someone said, “She must have come to say goodbye.”
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A few weeks later, I went to the farm again.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________I was just about to leave when the hummingbird appeared.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________A few years ago，we adopted(收养) a lovely dog whom we named Gypsy. We didn’t know her age, background, or how she ended up wandering the streets of a large southern city with no owner. But we felt sure she’d had a difficult life, as she moved back whenever we wanted to touch her. She seemed particularly afraid of strange men. Gradually, Gypsy adapted to her new home with us, and she followed me around everywhere I went silently. Nothing seemed to make her bark (叫)，but we thought she was just a quiet dog as she seemed happy with us otherwise.
Not long after we brought her home, I had an operation on my leg. Gypsy seemed to dislike the coming and going of doctors, and visiting nurses-especially the males. She was still silent, but she barked at the ones she liked least. This led us to believe it must have been a male who had mistreated her before.
One day about a year after my operation, I was in the bathroom giving Gypsy a bath. Suddenly，I fell onto the floor. Luckily，I fell between the tub(浴盆) and water pipe. If I had hit one of them, I feel certain that would have been the end of me.
Unfortunately, I had no way to seek for help. The door was closed, and I didn’t have my phone with me. My husband wouldn’t be home from work for hours, so I did the only thing I could think of: I started shouting for help as loudly as I could.
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Gypsy was clearly confused(困惑的) by my shouting.
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________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________“I just couldn’t stop thinking about her.” That’s what a nine-year-old cat lover Sutter Rowse said after he saw a story about a stray cat (流浪猫) in his community of Williams Lake, British Columbia, which was in need of surgery (外科手术). He decided to do something about it and raise funds to help the cat. Now, that cat is much better and has a brand new owner, all thanks to Sutter’s hard work and clever thinking.
Online, Sutter came across a story posted by his local animal shelter. The BC SPCA explained that the cat — which was named Hazel by shelter staff — had been found at the transfer station in Anahim Lake, about fourhours west of Sutter’s home. A transfer station is a place where garbage and other waste are sorted. Shelter staff said Hazel was looking for food there.
They later discovered that the back part of it was injured. The head of her femur (股骨) was broken and died — meaning the death of cells in some part of the body — had set in, so Hazel would need surgery to get better. SPCA staff put out a call to the community to raise funds for it, and that’s when Sutter got to work. Sutter thought up a good idea: making use of the power of cinnamon buns (肉桂面包). He knew if there was anything that could get community members to empty their pockets, it would be this sweet treat: cinnamon buns.
He and his mum, Leslie Rowse, got to workbaking, and his mum posted about Sutter’s efforts on a social media page for his local community. Around 15 dozen (or 180) cinnamon buns later, Sutter had raised $850. His mum dropped off the money at the shelter, and Hazel was able to start her surgeries.
Following Hazel’s surgeries and several days of recovery, Sutter’s mum was ready to share some good news. Sutter’s mum told Sutter that Hazel had a new owner. She asked him to guess who that owner was. “I guessed us! And I was right,” said Sutter.
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They decided to pick up Hazel on weekend.
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________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The Dog Who Saved Our Family
We met Max at the pickup area of Alaska Airlines five years ago. He was a standard poodle(狮子狗)born on Valentine’s Day in 2017， and came to us in a small blue box. We had adopted him from an out-of-state raiser who posted the news on the social network. Our only request was that he have a calm behavior, able to bear the pushing and hugging of our eight-year-old daughter and six-year-old son.
We were a sweet little family:me,my husband, and our children, Sophie and Jake. But for years I’d felt as if we wouldn’t really be complete until we had a dog. Also, my husband worked in a business company and had to travel some 200 days a year for his job, and I knew I’d feel safer with a large animal sleeping by the door.
When we opened the box, the last piece of our puzzle fell into place. With his black hair and intelligent eyes,Max was beautiful. He was so small that he fit into the palm of my hand, his big paws lapping over the sides. He was also a little bit scared. As I pulled him close,I felt his heart pound and wondered if we’d done the right thing, taking him from his mother. But it was too late. Sophie and Jake were already fighting over who would hold him next and who should have the right to take a bath for him.
Over the following months, we spent endless hours watching Max play with his Kong toy or roll around the living room floor. Like most poodles, he was smart. He mastered house-training quickly and never chewed on our furniture or shoes. He considered himself one of us.
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One night we were sleeping in the bedroom when I heard some strange noise.
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