My husband, Donald, took our daughter Sarah out for some ice cream the night before driving her to college. As they were walking back to the car, they saw a young man sitting on the ground and giving his puppy a cone.
"A cute dog," Donald said as they walked by. "A free dog," the young man replied. Donald asked him what he meant by that and the man explained. He was moving away from Vermont and did not think the travel would be good for the dog. He had raised her from a small puppy. The man said she was a 6-month-old cross between the Doberman and the Labrador named Rhubarb. Donald took his phone number. The rest, as they say, is history.
Rhubarb was a sweet dog and very friendly and loved everyone. Whenever someone came to the house, she was always happy. She also got along with Willie, an older Samoyed we had. Willie was not well and died about a year later, but, fortunately, Rhubarb's company helped him keep going for longer than that if he had been alone. But the interesting thing about Rhubarb was that she never barked. She would sometimes get excited when she saw a chipmunk (花栗鼠) and make a little crying sound.
One hot night when she was about 4 years old, we went to bed with the windows open and the doors unlocked. At about 3 a. m. , I woke up to the sound of Rhubarb barking. I woke Donald and we got out of bed.
Rhubarb was coming toward us. We turned on the lights and noticed the door to the kitchen was open. Then we saw the door leading into the house from the garage was also open. We quickly locked all the doors, and we did not get any sleep that night. It was deep into the night, so we didn't call the police.
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The next day we noticed there was cigarette ash on the floor.
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My purse was right next to the door.
