She watched and watched. She loved the man. She had loved him since they had found one another when she was barely more than a pup. That had been a cold night in a much larger city. She had been young and homeless and hungry. He was homeless and hungry, too, though not so young. They had kept one another warm that first night. And from then on, they had stayed together. They shared all that came to them. Often it wasn’t much. Food the old man found in Dumpsters behind restaurants and bakeries. An occasional rabbit the golden dog caught. Maybe a shed far enough away from a farmhouse to be safe for shelter. Or a large cardboard box behind some bushes in a park. Sometimes the man had work. When that happened, he brought food from a grocery store. But soon—the golden dog never knew why—they would be moving again. And then they would be hungry again. Both of them hungry. The day came when the dog began to grow sick. She didn’t know she was sick. She knew only that the rabbits seemed to run faster.
