I had climbed the ladder to trim branches when suddenly my dog caught the cuff of my trousers in his teeth and yanked me down. In that moment, I began to grasp the reason for his strange actions.
That day keeps vivid in my memory. The morning sky was heavy with dark clouds, the air thick and unmoving, like the calm before a storm. It looked inevitable that rain would soon fall. Still, I decided not to postpone my task—I needed to cut the dried limbs from the old apple tree near the house. The ladder had already been set out in readiness, and despite the threatening weather, I resolved to finish the job.
I leaned the ladder against the trunk and started climbing. I had gone only a few steps when I felt a sudden tug from behind. Glancing back, I froze in disbelief.
My dog was clambering after me. His paws slipped against the rungs, claws scraping the metal, his eyes locked directly on mine.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “Stay down!”
I tried waving him away, but he rose on his hind legs again, bracing himself on the steps with his front paws. Then he bit the fabric of my trousers and pulled so abruptly that I nearly toppled backward.
“Hey! Are you insane?” I snapped. “Let go!”
But he refused. Digging in his paws, he tugged harder, determined to drag me back down.
Annoyance warred with 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.
