The dog was small and skinny, with tattered dark red fur and a little blue collar without any phone number on it. When I kneeled down, he looked like he wanted nothing more than to run into my arms, so I extended out a hand to him, and he withdrew as if he’d just seen a ghost. 

He shivered softly. I gazed into his lonely, crestfallen eyes while he lay there shaking next to that little beaten down path. I could tell he was scared of people, and I honestly couldn’t blame him because I’ve always felt similarly when I’ve been vulnerable like he is right now. I reached out my hands to him once more and this time he looked a little less afraid.

The dog shakily got up from the bed of leaves where he lay, and stumbled over to where I was. When he stood up, I could tell he’d been there for a while, because the mud made an imprint in the ground where he was once laying. He started sniffing around me and making a home for himself in my arms.

While I held him and gave him the much needed comfort I knew he desired, I struck up a fire with some sticks nearby. We laid there in the dim light of the setting sun watching flames grow larger on that broken down cobblestone path. For the first time in my 25 years of life, I felt the warm feeling many describe as “human connection”, but the strangest part of all of this was that it wasn’t even with a human.