The Dinner Guest

told by Donna Heath
(as told to April Heath Pastis)
I had the most beautiful dog when I was a kid. It was part Pekinese and part Terrier. It was golden with long, soft beautiful hair. I called her Pug, even though I didn’t know anything about Pugs then, but because she had a flat nose that was more like a Pug than even
some of the Pugs I’ve had since. One night, we were all at the dinner table. Which wasn’t usual cause my brother Tevis was usually working or one of my sisters were out. During dinner, Pug used to sit as close to the table as she could hoping someone would drop a bit of
food and she’d nab it. We hadn’t been sitting down too long when Pug started barking. She ran over to the front door and barked and barked. She didn’t stop. Then she started backing up, barking the whole way. She backed up, right under the table and kept barking. I
watched her head and eyes move as if they were following the path of a person walking through the kitchen and start toward the hall. She followed the “person” who wasn’t there, barking all the way and chased “the person” we couldn’t see to the bottom of the stairs. She didn’t go up. She just stopped and kept barking.
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