h a strange pulse of unease. “Why is he acting like this?” I wondered. “Is it some game?”
Yet his stare carried something more urgent—an insistence, a war:ning.
It was as if he were trying to say: “Don’t climb.”
I shooed him off again, raising my voice:
“Go on!
Stop it! Let me finish these branches in peace!”
But the moment I stepped higher, his jaws clamped my leg once more, jerking me downward.
My grip slipped, and my chest tightened with dread—one wrong move and I could fall.
I froze, breathing hard.
A thought cut through me: if this continued, I truly would crash and injure myself badly.
I needed to make a choice.
Climbing down, I fixed him with a stern glare and whispered:
“Alright. Since you’re so clever, you’re going on the chain.”
He lowered his head in guilt, but I still led him to the kennel and fastened him. Certain that I could now work undisturbed, I returned to the ladder.
I had just grasped it again, ready to climb, when the unexpected happened.
At last, I understood the reason for his desperate behavior.
A searing flash split the sky.
Thunder cracked at once. Lightning struck the apple tree directly at the trunk where I had planned to climb.
The bark exploded with a shower of sparks, smoke curling through the air.
I leapt backward, shielding my face with trembling hands.
For a long second I stood motionless, unable to breathe. Then it sank in: had it not been for my stubborn dog, I would have been up there, high on the ladder, right beside the treetop when the strike hit. The thought chilled me.
I turned to look at him.
He was standing by the kennel, the chain stretched tight, his gaze steady and full of something deeper than words. “My God,” I muttered, shivers racing across my skin.
“You saved me.”
Dropping down beside him, I wrapped my arms around his neck. He wagged his tail gently, as if to say he knew exactly what he’d done.
And in that instant, I realized a truth: sometimes our animals sense and understand what our human minds cannot.
