Hike!

Chapter Two

She turned down an ally and found him laying edged up against the side of a house. "Jack?" she asked softly. Yukon Jack perked his ears. This was the ally Kendall had found him in all those years ago. She'd been walking home from school and noticed his mother laying there.

She had approached the mother dog and let it sniff her hand. She then pat her on the head and noticed she had puppies. She then slipped a piece of left over lunch meat from her bag and gave it to the mother dog. The mother gladly took it and ate it swiftly. Afterward Kendall kneeled down and pet the mother dog again.

Kendall got up and finished walking home. Upon arrival she told her dad about the mother dog. Her father had her take him to the mother dog and her puppies. The father saw no collar on the dog, and concluded, considering her scrawny appearance, that she was a stray.

The dad picked up the gunny sack he'd carried there. "Put the puppies in here," he told Kendall. The father picked up the female dog and wrapped her around his neck. Kendall quickly put all five puppies into the sack. They went back home and the father put the mother dog in the shed, and had Kendall put the puppies in the shed with her.

Kendall remembered being too afraid to ask if they could keep the dogs. Her father turned out to want to keep the dogs, he asked Kendall what she thought. Kendall wanted a pet dog more than anything in the world. Her father had dogs, but they weren't pets they were working dogs.

She was so excited, she could have her very own dog, maybe even start a team. She remembered how she'd raised him to be a sled dog. Her father helped train him, but now, some eight years later he was facing the end of his days, and she wasn't ready to part with him.