A Halloween Story For You.

[LizT]

Loyalty Beyond the Grave

Rusty was the classic mutt. And in classic fashion, he acquired his owners, rather than the other way around, by finding himself a family – in this case the Ahrens family of Wisconsin.

Mike Ahrens always wanted a dog, but his wife Bridget was against the idea. She worried the canine would careen wildly through the house, knocking over the antiques, digging up the yard, and making enemies of the neighbors.

But Mike persuaded her to give Rusty a chance. Rusty was a brownish, medium-sized dog that had hints of Labrador, bulldog and hound. He promptly fulfilled Bridget's expectations and added a few others – he escaped the yard and made acquaintance with some of the female dogs in the area before the Ahrens.

Rusty did have one redeeming quality. He was devoted to Stephen, the couple's 2-year-old son. Rusty took Stephen's playful tail pulling and the poking in stride. He slept outside Stephen's room and was there to greet the boy when he woke up.

Rusty continued to find ways to escape the yard, leaving for a few hours and then returning on his own. One day, however, he was crossing the road in front of the Ahrens house when a car struck him. The Ahrens rushed him to the vet, but his conditioned worsened quickly. Wanting to spare Rusty pain, they decided to euthanize him. The family grieved – losing Rusty had punched a hole in their lives.

A month later, Stephen was walking with his mother along the same stretch of road when he broke free from her hand and ran after a ball he saw in the street ... and into the path of an oncoming car. But before the car struck, something threw Stephen to the curb.

Bridget ran to her son. He was shaken and crying, but unhurt. The driver, relieved that the boy was all right, said he was sorry he couldn't avoid their dog, but that he was a hero.

Perplexed, Bridget said there wasn't any dog in the road. The driver insisted there was – a brown dog had knocked Stephen out of the way, and the car had hit the dog. "I felt the wheels going over the dog's body," he said.

When they looked, the dog – if there was a dog – was gone. When asked if he saw a dog, Stephen nodded and said, "It was Rusty."

[Cheyd]

spooky story, gave me goosepimples

[snippet]

What a lovely story

[Simply Grand]

Wow!!

[LizT]

Strange.

When we first moved into this house just over 10 years ago when my husband and I got together we had five cats between us. His two and my three.

We kept seeing cats everywhere and my kids called me the crazy cat lady as when I came home in my car they all came running over to me. We are down to two now, as this was 10 years ago.

Anyway, we kept seeing this light grey cat IN our house at odd times. Sometimes it would be sitting on our washing machine and at other times just drifting through the family/kitchen area.

We knew it wasn't one of ours and it always 'vanished' when we tried to look at it closely.

We began to refer to it as "the ghost cat'. It was strange. Then after we had been here a couple of years my OH had to go under the house in a very low area to help install some gas pipes for the plumber who was less than agile.

He found the skeleton of a cat down there, brought it out and buried where we have our dear departed cats and dogs buried.

Sightings of the 'ghost cat' stopped.

But on occassion, and just recently I was standing in our driveway talking to my OH when I felt what I thought was one of our cats pushing up against the back of my leg. I was annoyed and gently pushed backed saying "stop it" as I didn't want hairs all over my pants.

No one's there my OH smiled. Must have been our old friend.

Edited October 31, 2011 by LizT

[Simply Grand]

Liz, that's amazing! I quite like the thought of animal ghosts being around keeping and eye on things, especially protecting people like in the first story.

[dogfan]

Wow