Please don't bother trying to convince me dogs don't understand what's going on within their human families, not after what happened with Benji the other evening.
Our neighbor knocked on the door near dark last week with a flier in hand. Her black dog pictured on the single page had somehow gotten free from her yard and was missing. Benji listened attentively alongside us as the woman explained further.
The flier described the missing dog as friendly but very skittish, especially about approaching people.
The neighbor knew Jeanetta and Benji walk almost every day since he's pretty much recovered from a vicious attack by a pit bull mix about six weeks ago. She hoped Jeanetta might spot her lost dog on one of their outings.
With 30 minutes of daylight remaining that day, Jeanetta strapped on Benji's harness and they took a modified stroll around the neighborhood.
At the top of our street near the church grounds, Benji's nose suddenly became glued to the ground as he swept the grass back and forth with his dime-sized nose and began trotting ever faster.
He was clearly on the trail of something, perhaps one of the many rabbits we have surrounding the neighborhood.
Within a minute he was straining against the leash and had started to trot. Jeanetta was finding it difficult to keep up with the skinny-legged 12-pound boy. In fact, he broke into a full sprint.
Soon they rounded a corner and, sure enough, standing there several yards away was the neighbor's missing dog. Benji somehow had understood from the get-go that that was why they left the house that evening, and he had used his nose to find him.
But, as the flier had said, the dog was afraid to come when she called him. So Jeanetta contacted the neighbor and told her where he was. By the next day, the dog was back in its yard and all was back to normal.
What truly impressed me was how Benji could possibly have known that dog was what they were looking for when they set off on their walk. It was clear to Jeanetta he knew their assignment and obviously took it seriously.
More dragonflies
You may recall that several weeks ago I wrote a GodNod about the sudden and unexpected death of a middle-aged man named John who worked with my daughter Anna at the Millington Naval Air Base near Memphis.
John and Anna had become the closest of friends along with Amy, who also worked in the same office. I wrote that John had long had a fascination and appreciation for dragonflies, even keeping a painting of one in his home.
Anna had dropped John at the airport on the day he died and something had urged her to turn and take a final look at him as she pulled away. Only minutes later, he dropped dead from heart failure while standing in line.
Later that day, my distraught daughter pulled into her driveway to see her entire yard swarming in dragonflies, something that never happened before.
And later, at John's funeral miles away, the congregation emerged from the church to see the same thing happening on the lawn at that particular moment in time.
She and Amy both were convinced this was a sign from John that he was in a good place and wanted them to know.
Now to today's point. Since that time, Anna said that every time she and Amy leave work together, a single dragonfly will suddenly appear and fly between them.
"It's unbelievable, Dad," she said. "And it just keeps happening. The other day Amy and I were standing at our cars talking as we always do before we leave work when a dragonfly flew between us within two feet and hovered in place for several seconds, just looking at us."
She and Amy both believe, because the three of them had such a close friendship, that John is continuing to reassure them that his presence remains and he knew they would recognize it because they had long known of his emotional connection to dragonflies.
Anna repeated what she's told me several times since the various dragonfly episodes have unfolded. "I didn't see a dragonfly for probably years, if even that, and now it's happening every time we leave the building where the three of us spent so much time as friends and co-workers.
"And why would one fly right up between our faces and hover as it stared at us for a good three seconds?"
"No one will ever convince me there's not an unseen higher hand involved in this."
Nor will I ever try, dearest daughter.
If you've had an experience you can't explain other than that a large unseen hand must have been involved (I call them GodNods), please use the email address below to tell me about it. I've come to believe from the many I have learned about that there are endless numbers of these mystical occurrences we never hear about.
Now go out into the world and treat everyone you meet exactly like you want them to treat you.
Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist, was editor of three Arkansas dailies and headed the master's journalism program at Ohio State University. Email him at [email protected].