A dramatic moment in my life happened last November when I was walking over to my neighbor’s house to baby sit. It was a cold day about a week before Thanksgiving and I was walking over to my neighbor’s to watch her 4 year old like I did almost every Saturday or Sunday morning. As I walked out I took a short cut through the dog lot. Most of the dogs came out of their houses because they thought I was going to feed them, take them for a run or stop to pet them. I was running late because I had just gotten off the phone with my friend and was in a hurry, but I always stop to check on the dogs. I noticed our best lead dog, Jazz, didn’t come out of her house like she usually did. I called her name; still no response, so I walked over to her house and saw her curled up inside, so I reached my arm in. I felt her body, it was rock hard and cold as stone. My mind went blank, I was shocked. Growing up with a dog team, I have seen several dead dogs, but I had never been the one to actually find one. I sat on the cold snow and petted her fur. Suddenly I snapped out of it and began to cry. The first thing I could think of to do was to take her out of her house. I unclipped her chain and tipped her house over, some irrational part of me still thinking she might hop out at any minute. Tears streaming down my face, I wrestled with her house, but I couldn’t do it on my own. My only option was to run back into the house and get my mom, which I did. Together we tipped her house and got the bottom out so we could carry her out of the dog lot.

The most difficult thing for me to remember was the discovery, the thought of touching her hard, cold body inside the dark house. Finding a dog like that has always been one of my biggest fears, and that day it became a reality. I had wondered how I would react to something like that many times, but it had always seemed vague and fuzzy in my mind, like something that probably would never happen. I think the realization that the unexpected can happen was what hurt me the most.