The story of Judah is actually one chapter from the book Hank is writing about “Thomas, the little black dog”. The book chronicles the adventures of Thomas, including his time in Mantorville, as well as his experiences attending five different universities across the United States. Judah is one of the dogs that Thomas lived with on Hank's farm.  Hank plans to publish the book in 2012.

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He was almost invisible, floating along the shore of the Zumbro River under the shade of the trees overhanging the river’s edge. His little black nose was bobbing up and down in the water, taking in air and noisily blowing out water each time he surfaced. If it had not been for the noise he was making, he might never have been found. That’s what my daughter was told when she went to pick up the little black Lab puppy at the home of a coworker. Jessica, home for the summer from college, was working as an intern at the clinic in town. At work that day, she had heard the story of a puppy pulled from the river just before he would have been swept over the Mantorville Dam. The puppy needed a home, and Jessica had a history of finding homes for homeless dogs.

That night Jessica repeated the story of the puppy’s rescue to the rest of the family. The coworker and her husband had just finished canoeing down the river and were in the process of pulling their canoe out of the water when they heard the puppy desperately trying to breathe as he floated toward the dam. The water was only a couple of feet deep in this part of the river, so the husband quickly waded in, snagged the puppy with one hand, and held him close to his chest as he returned to shore.

The wife gasped as she saw the puppy. There was a noose around its neck, and the end of the rope was tied to a small section of concrete block.

This dog was supposed to be dead. Someone had tried to kill the puppy by tossing him into the river with a concrete block tied to his neck. But the block must have hit a rock near the water’s surface and broken into pieces. That’s what saved the puppy’s life. The small piece still attached to the rope was heavy enough to keep the little puppy from swimming, but not heavy enough to pull him under.

After Jessica finished telling the family about this dog’s short history, she announced that rather than look for a home for the puppy, we were going to keep him in our family. And after just having heard about this puppy’s harrowing experience, no one in the family disagreed. I then said we should name him Moses since he was pulled from the river. My two sons agreed, but Jessica, with her mother’s backing, said, “His name will be Judah.” I made another logical plea for Moses, but to no avail. The puppy would be named Judah.

I guess I should introduce myself. My name is Hank Thorson; Nancy and I have three children. You already know Jessica’s name. Our sons are named Aaron and Jacob. We live on a small hobby farm just outside of Mantorville, a small community near Rochester, Minnesota. At the time of this event, Nancy and all three of our children were attending the University of Nebraska during the school year and spending summers back home in Minnesota. Nancy was working on her PhD, and the kids were working on undergraduate degrees.

Although we have had many large breed dogs on the farm in the past, at this time we just had the boys’ lap dogs. Aaron had a pug named Barabbas, and Jacob had a pug-Shiatsu cross named Thomas. Thomas was solid black with some small white markings on his chest. Judah, of course, was solid black with no markings. These two black dogs took to each other right away. Although Thomas was two years older, Judah was already a little larger than Thomas.

A friend of mine who raises Labs came over to take a look at Judah and immediately said he knew why Judah’s original owner had tried to kill him. When I asked what he meant, he explained that Judah was not a purebred black Lab because of the size of his head. He explained that Judah’s head was too large to be a pure pedigree. He thought that Judah’s entire body was going to be larger than a traditional Lab. I thought about Judah floating down the river barely able to lift his nose out of the water to breathe. His large head had caused his rejection, but also saved his life. A normal puppy would not have been able to stick his nose high enough out of the water to breathe. A smaller puppy would have been pulled under by the remnants of the concrete block. It made me think about how sometimes what we see as a flaw in people can actually be advantageous to them. It was at that moment that I had this overwhelming feeling that I was going to learn a lot from Judah.

The rest of the summer went by fast, and soon it was time for Nancy and the kids to head back to Lincoln for the fall semester. Aaron took Barabbas with him, but Jake left Thomas so that Judah would not be alone while I was at work. I’ve worked in the Finance Department at O’Reilly Trucks in Rochester for more than twenty years.  I’m currently the controller for North American operations.  Since I don’t get home for lunch, it would be a long lonely day for Judah without Thomas.

Thomas and Judah had developed a tight bond over the summer. Judah was already considerably larger than Thomas, but Judah always looked up (figuratively) to Thomas as his big brother. Thomas considered himself a black Lab and thought he was just as large as Judah. Thomas liked being the so-called big brother and always took the lead when they would go into the woods on an adventure. Thomas thought he was king of the woods as he ran among the tall oaks and saw other creatures flee out of his path. Thomas didn’t realize that it was the big black brute running behind him that gave him the authority he was so proud to have.

Our house overlooks the Zumbro River, so we have the opportunity to view all of the wildlife common to southeastern Minnesota from our living room. Although deer and turkeys dominate from a numbers standpoint, we also see fox, raccoons, beavers, possum, and skunks. In the air, we have a wide variety of birds including many species of ducks as well as Canada geese and some cranes. However, when we are outside with lap dogs like Thomas or Barabbas, we’re on the lookout for bald eagles and coyotes.

I wasn’t too worried about coyotes anymore since Thomas and Judah had chased one off our property. Thomas, of course, thought the coyote was afraid of him. I just had to make sure that Thomas never left the house alone. My greatest fear was of bald eagles. We had one that glided by twice a day at mid-morning and mid-afternoon. I first became aware of the threat of bald eagles after reading about the problems local hog farmers were having with the national bird. We have some free range farmers in the area that raise pigs in large outdoor pens where the pigs roam free. The farmers couldn’t figure out whom or what was taking their pigs, because the baby pigs would just disappear. There were no traces of blood left behind, and there were no tracks in the mud around the pens.

After losing a number of pigs, one farmer decided to stake out his pen from a position under a big maple tree about a hundred yards from the pigs. Unlike the movie stakeouts that involve a van loaded with electronic equipment, this farmer only had a water bottle and a set of binoculars with him. He wasn’t there long before the mystery was solved. All but one of the piglets were with the sows, and this lone baby was destined to be the target. The farmer watched as a big eagle circled overhead. Then suddenly the eagle swooped down, snatched the piglet with its long claws, and carried it off into the air toward the farmer. The farmer said that everything happened so fast that it was hard to believe it was real. The desperate squeals of the baby silenced the rest of the wildlife in the area. As the eagle flew by, the squealing stopped, and the farmer raised his binoculars to see blood dripping from the pig’s belly where the eagle’s claws were piercing it. A few moments later, everything was back to normal; the song birds were singing; the other pigs were snorting and grunting. Nature had taken its course.

I’m all for nature taking its course, but not when it threatens Thomas. After hearing about the pigs, I made some changes and restricted the amount of time that Thomas and Judah were outside alone. I decided to keep them inside while I was at work, so I installed a dog door between the kennel and the garage and another door between the garage and laundry room. They could move back and forth as they pleased between the three areas. When I arrived home each evening, I would let them outside to run freely, knowing the eagle had already made its last flight by the farm for the day.

As the winter season approached, their time outside was in the dark. They didn’t seem to mind running by the light of the moon. I would let them out about six each evening, with the overhead door of the garage left half way open so they could get back into the house whenever they desired. They would come home each evening between nine and ten. We would sit together on the sofa in the living room and watch the local news and Jay Leno. Watching the Tonight Show together had become a ritual. I would sit in the middle of the sofa with Thomas on my left snuggled up against my thigh. Judah would be on my right lying down on the cushions with his head resting on my right thigh. If I was in the kitchen or bathroom when Jay Leno started talking, Judah would start barking until I took my designated position in front of the TV. We would watch the entire show and stay on the sofa until Conan came on. Conan’s voice was the signal to go to bed. We would all go upstairs to my bedroom (they would prefer I called it “our” bedroom). Thomas would sleep on the pillow next to me, and Judah would sleep right in the middle of the bed. That left a third of the bed for me.

In the morning, the dogs would lie in bed until the last second before I went down stairs to leave. As I left the bedroom, they followed me down to the laundry room where I checked their water pail before I left for work. When I returned in the evening, the cycle started all over again.

It was amazing how Judah respected little Thomas. If Thomas finished his food before Judah finished his own food, Thomas would just bark once and Judah would back off and surrender his food to Thomas. If Judah was sitting in the preferred spot on the deck, Thomas would bark once and Judah would get up and move so Thomas could have the favored spot. The only time Judah would stand his ground was when they were eating steak. Once a week, I would grill a large steak on the deck grill. As soon as I lit the grill, the two of them would lie down in the middle of the deck. They would never beg. They knew I would make several trips in and out of the house while I cooked the steak. They knew that when the steak was done, I would go into the house and eat my share of it. And they knew that the next time I came out I would have two plates with their share of the steak cut up into little pieces for them to eat.

Thomas, the more aggressive eater, always cleared his plate first. He would bark at Judah to share his steak, but Judah would ignore him. Then Thomas would put his little nose on the edge of Judah’s plate. The nose on the plate was Judah’s limit. Without missing a beat as he chewed his steak, Judah would use his large head to head-butt Thomas out of the area. It was probably the most carefully executed maneuver a person would ever see. In a forceful, but smooth motion, Judah would swing his head so that his big nose went under Thomas’s body and propelled Thomas into the air, lifting him up about two feet above the deck. Thomas would land about ten feet away, and he always landed on his feet. If Judah was eating slowly, Thomas would get a second head-butt before supper was over.

We continued to grill steaks throughout the winter with the exception of the holiday weeks because Barabbas was home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I didn’t think that Barabbas, with his short pug legs, would be able to land safely after one of Judah’s head-butts.

As the spring semester was winding down, everyone decided they would stay in Lincoln and take summer classes. It was starting to get pretty lonely on the farm, but I realized that I would have to adjust to living alone. The kids all planned to go on to grad school—Jessica was going to Montana, Jake to Colorado, and Aaron to Wisconsin. Nancy would have her PhD in another year, and then she would be moving on to another university.  As I adjusted to this lifestyle, it was good to come home to Thomas and Judah. They were like grandchildren to me, and they treated me like a grandfather, always giving me their respect and love. Our routines continued with the dogs running in the woods each night and always getting home in time for Leno.

In my job, I have learned over the years that whenever you change a procedure or routine, you need to monitor the new process for unexpected results. One day in June, I learned that I needed to apply this knowledge to any changes in routine within my personal life. It was a beautiful sunny day, and for the first time in months, I was not scheduled for a luncheon meeting at work. I only live twenty minutes from the office, so I decided to go home for a quick lunch. This was the first time I went home for lunch in the year that Judah had been in the family. When I opened the door to the house, Judah and Thomas came bursting out to greet me. They knew I was early and it was not time for them to run, so they came back into the house with me. As I started to take food out of the refrigerator, I could see they thought I was making something for them. I didn’t want to disappoint them while I ate in front of them, so I let them outside to run while I was home. I watched them run around to the back of the house before I returned to the kitchen. I could see them from the window, dashing down to the river where they could run around in about a half acre of grass between the river and the woods.

I took another minute or two to make my sandwich and was ready to go out on the deck, but thought I better check on the boys one more time. I went over to the window and saw Thomas standing at the edge of the lawn by the river. I looked but did not see Judah. This was strange because they always stayed close to each other. I couldn’t figure out what was going on with Thomas because he never stands still; he’s always running when he is down by the river. Now, however, he was just standing there like a statue looking up stream. I looked to my right to see what had caught his attention and froze. My heart started beating rapidly, and I went into what I call my fear mode. The eagle was on a glide path leading straight to Thomas.

The last time I was in fear mode was during a car accident. My car had spun out on ice and was slowly spinning in circles as it glided toward a ditch. During these times, my adrenaline starts to flow and time seems to slow down, but it’s not the time that’s slowing but rather the fact that you’re thinking fast. During those times, you are able to think about all of your options and take the appropriate action, but today was different. The world had slowed down, my adrenaline was flowing, and I had thought about options, but there was only one. I didn’t have enough time to get outside and yell at Thomas. My only option was to stand in front of the window and watch. Many thoughts were going through my mind; this is what it feels like for a parent to watch his child being run over by a car. I should have considered that the eagle could have changed its schedule when I changed my routine. All I could do was watch the final moments of Thomas’s life. I remembered the drops of blood dripping from the little pig’s belly and thought about blood dripping from Thomas.

He just stood there staring at the eagle, as if he were daring the eagle to fly into his territory. He was Thomas; he was invincible. In Thomas’s world, every creature in the woods feared him. Thomas believed that nothing could harm him. As the eagle drew closer, it began to flap its wings to adjust its altitude to the perfect height to enable it to reach down with its strong claws and grab little helpless Thomas.

When I’m in these situations, I always say a prayer of a few words, “Jesus, help me.” This day as I watched the eagle stretch its legs out and begin to open its claws, I took one last look at Thomas and said, “Jesus, help him.”

And that’s when it happened. As my heart was racing, I saw a black blur come bounding out of the woods. I thought to myself, “There is hope; there is Judah.”

Judah exploded from the woods, expecting to play with Thomas on the lawn, but as he hit the grass and took in the sight of Thomas and the eagle, Judah was transformed. He has always been fast, but Judah covered the fifty feet between him and Thomas in two seconds or less. The eagle didn’t see Judah; it was focused on Thomas, and Thomas wasn’t fleeing. This was probably the first time this eagle was being stared down by its prey.

As Judah flew across the lawn, I expected him to go straight for the eagle, which would be only a couple feet off the ground as Judah reached Thomas. I was wrong; Judah had another set of priorities. Instead of going airborne, Judah lowered his head into the grass so his nose slid under Thomas, then sent his friend flying with the hardest head-butt Thomas had ever received. Thomas flew at least twice as far as normal and did not land on his feet. His landing was a soft one, though, as he rolled through the long grass along the river’s shore.

Judah was not finished. In the same motion that sent Thomas into the safety of the long grass, Judah’s body went straight up and, while in the air, spun around to face the attacker straight on. As he turned, I saw his face. I had never seen Judah show his teeth, but even from my distance, I could see every tooth exposed and the fierce look on Judah’s face. Although it was silent in the house, I could practically hear Judah’s snarls and growls.

The eagle, in total shock, veered off over the water and flew downstream. Thomas, now back on his paws, chased after the eagle for a short distance barking, “I am Thomas; don’t mess with me.” The little dog didn’t have a clue.

Judah took a sitting position on top of the river bank as I ran from the house to the river. Judah maintained his position, stoically on top of the river bank, keeping an eye on Thomas who was now playing in the shallow water. I sat down next to Judah, and he laid his head on my thigh like he did every night. As I rubbed his neck, I could feel that he was still tense. I told him what a good job he had done, taking care of his brother, at which point he lifted his head and looked into my eyes. He didn’t have to speak because I saw it in his eyes: “I am my brother’s keeper.”

After this close call, I made a new rule for myself that required me to always stay with the boys when they were outside during daylight hours. The rest of the summer went by without any further events. The seasons were moving quickly as we kept to our routines through fall and winter. Although we followed the same routines, I did make some modifications to give me more flexibility. I purchased a DVR that allowed me to record the local news, Leno, and Conan. If I needed more time before I sat on the sofa with the boys, I would just replay the local news. As long as they heard the voices of the local broadcasters, they were in no hurry to get positioned on the cushions. If I was tired and wanted to go to bed early, I would play reruns and fast forward through the news and Leno to get to Conan.

The next spring, Judah was almost two years old and Thomas was four. What started out as a typical Monday evening turned into anything but typical. Thomas came into the house first, as he always does. I waited to see Judah because he was always no more than a minute behind Thomas. For some reason, Thomas was home earlier than usual; it was only eight o’clock. After five minutes passed, I became concerned. I walked outside and called for Judah. It was quiet, no barking, nothing. This wasn’t right. Since the experience with the eagle, Judah kept close to Thomas. I returned to the house, grabbed a jacket and a flashlight, and called for Thomas to come with me. I headed toward the river, but Thomas stopped and would not follow me no matter how many times I called him. Now I was really concerned because Thomas was afraid to go down to the river with me. I thought he would lead me to Judah, but he refused to go near the river. I took Thomas back to the house and up to my bedroom. I thought it was the best place for him to wait while I went down to the river alone. Thomas hopped up on the bed, but instead of settling down on his pillow, he slowly settled onto Judah’s spot in the middle of the bed. Thomas laid his head down between his two front paws and let his nose sink into the comforter. He could smell Judah’s scent, and that relaxed him.

I took my rifle from the closet, made sure it was loaded, and then headed for the river. I heard the rapids in the river as I walked across the lawn. I remembered the many nights that Judah, Thomas, and I had fallen asleep while listening to the peaceful sound of the rapids that flowed through our open bedroom window. This peaceful memory was short lived, because as I stepped into the woods, I felt like a child. It was scary. The tall trees cut out most of the moon’s light. My flashlight could only illuminate a small path in front of me. I realized I didn’t know anything about coyotes. Did they make any noise before they attacked? Then I remembered that I was there for Judah, and suddenly all of the fear left me. This feeling reminded me of when my children were younger. Something that would fill me with fear when I was alone would actually instill boldness and courage in me if I had to protect my children. I had to find Judah.

I searched and followed every path in the woods. I went over each area at least twice and still no Judah. After two hours, I returned to the house. Thomas was still on the bed in Judah’s spot. I crawled into bed and closed my eyes. I laid there with my eyes closed and prayed. I couldn’t sleep; I just kept praying. In the middle of the night, I opened my eyes and looked over at Thomas. He was still lying on Judah’s spot with his eyes wide open staring at me. I knew something bad had happened and that Thomas knew what it was.

As morning approached, I got dressed and planned my day. This time of the year the sun doesn’t rise until I’ve been at work for an hour,  so I planned to go in at my normal time, revise my schedule to free up the morning, and then head back home to search for Judah in the daylight. I put Thomas in the laundry room. He just sat there looking up at me, not believing I was going to leave him alone.

As I drove to work, I thought about how my life had become a country song. The pickup I was driving was a company vehicle, and the company was talking about eliminating the vehicle program for managers, which meant I would lose the pickup. And now Judah was missing. I was living alone, and now I was losing my truck and my dog. I tried to think of a song that would apply to this situation, but instead I just cried all the way to work.

The hour in the office sped by, and before long, I was back on the road heading home. I took the same route as earlier, but now the sun was up and I didn’t like what I was seeing as I drove down the narrow township road that leads to my house. My heart was starting to beat fast, and my hands were clenched around the steering wheel. As I looked up about a half mile ahead of me, I saw crows circling above the road. In the movies, you always see vultures circling over a carcass. In Minnesota, the sight of crows flying in a small circle means something dead is below them.

I hadn’t seen anything on the road when I drove to work. If there was something there, it had to be in the ditch. The crows had started to descend, but as I approached, they flew off. I parked along the side of the road and got out to take a look around. I was hoping to find a small animal, but the first thing I saw was red blood on the gravel road. As I walked across to the other side of the road to take a closer look, I saw broken glass on the road further up the hill, most likely from a headlight. I walked to the edge of the road and looked down into the ditch. There was Judah, lying in the ditch. His eyes were closed, which seemed odd, because every other animal I have come across that has been killed on the road always had its eyes open. He looked like he was sleeping. I didn’t see any blood on him, so I kneeled down beside him to see if I could wake him up, but Judah was going to sleep for eternity. Judah was dead. I touched his stiff cold body. I still couldn’t see an injury that would have left so much blood on the road, then I rolled him over to see the wound. My first thought was that he died instantly. He was essentially cut in half with only the skin on the other side of his chest holding him together. He most likely died on the road and was then moved to the ditch. Whoever moved him had treated him with respect. It must have been one of the neighbors.

I now knew why Thomas would not go down to the river with me; he knew Judah was in the opposite direction, out on this road. I walked back to the pickup, let down the tailgate, and then returned to get Judah. As I knelt down, I started to think about all of the time I had spent with Judah; now I had to bury him. Judah weighed 110 pounds, but he was now in two fifty-five-pound pieces held together by a little skin. I didn’t want him to break apart completely, so I carefully put my arms under each section of his body. I struggled at first but was able to lift him up and balance the two pieces as I carried him over to the pickup. I gently laid him in the pickup box and closed the tailgate. We were only a quarter mile from home. As I drove, I decided to bury him right away. I went into the house and grabbed the blanket off the sofa. The three of us had sat together on this same blanket almost every night for the last two years. Thomas got excited when I took the blanket, and he wanted to come outside with me. I debated whether I should let him help me bury Judah or not. I made the wrong decision and left Thomas in the house.

I went outside and wrapped Judah in the blanket. I had seen him on this blanket so much, it was only right to bury him in it. The blanket held the two parts together as I carried him to the edge of the woods. As I held him, I remembered the first day he came to our home. I remembered that Jessica said Judah’s rescuer had held Judah close to his chest as he carried Judah out of the river. I pulled Judah tight to my chest and hugged him and hugged him again. Life was not going to be the same without Judah. I laid him on the ground and retrieved a shovel from the garden shed. I dug the hole right along the main path leading into the woods. It was near the spot where Judah saved Thomas from the eagle. In some weird way, I felt that Judah could still watch over Thomas when he was down there.

As I gently laid Judah in the hole, I started sobbing. With each shovel of earth I put over him, I thought about how my life was going to change. Judah had been the best friend I had ever had. He was always there for me and never questioned anything I did. Then I realized that this was going to affect Thomas even more than me. The two of them had been together 24/7 for the last two years. I realized Thomas no longer had a big little brother to take care of him. I finished burying Judah and went to care for Thomas. On the way back up to the house, I called the rest of the family to let them know what had happened. Jake was worried about how Thomas would handle it.

Thomas did not handle it well. Every time he was let outside he would run to the spot where he had last seen Judah. I realized, after the fact, that I should have let him help me bury Judah. If I had, he would know where Judah was, instead of constantly looking for him. A few months after Judah died, some neighbors up the road acquired an adult black Lab. The first time Thomas saw this new neighbor he ran full speed toward the black dog. I kept calling him back, but he would not listen, he just ran faster. Thomas thought he had found Judah, and as he grew closer, he started to bark to get the Lab’s attention. The lab didn’t know what this little dog wanted and started to walk toward Thomas. Judah would have run to greet Thomas, and Thomas knew this. Thomas started to slow down, his run turning into a walk. He still had hope, but Thomas knew it was a lost cause. He smelled the Lab to make sure, then turned around and slowly walked home. Thomas could find no closure.

Jacob planned to start working on his master’s degree in Colorado in the coming fall, and he wanted to take Thomas with him. This was going to be Thomas’s last summer on the farm in Minnesota and would be Jacob’s first time living so far away from family; it would be good for him and Thomas to be together. Jacob had decided to move from Lincoln to Fort Collins in August. That meant that July would be my last month with Thomas.

July is one of the few warm months we have in Minnesota, and it was on one of those hot days in the middle of the month that a young man knocked on my door. Before he introduced himself, he announced, “I am the one who hit and killed your dog.” I just stood there looking at him. I had talked to a number of the neighbors to see if they had heard about anyone having an accident with a dog, but no one had. I didn’t think I would ever know the details of Judah’s death, but now his killer was at my door. I had been standing there just staring at him for so long, the young man felt uncomfortable and finally said, “I’m really sorry,” and started to walk away. I stopped him and asked him to come into the house. We sat in the living room, and I asked him his name, which turned out to be Josh Gunderson. I asked if it was Josh or Joshua, to which he replied “Joshua, but I go by Josh.” I asked where he lived and found out that he was from Rochester. He said that on the night of the accident, he and his friends were just driving the country roads, avoiding the highways because they were drinking. He said although they had gotten rid of all the liquor in the car, they didn’t report the accident because they were all under the age of twenty-one.

I asked him exactly what had happened. He said he was driving too fast on the gravel road, and when he came up over the hill, he saw a little black dog in the middle of the road.

“Did you say a little black dog?” I asked.

“Yes, it must have been this one,” he said, looking down at Thomas who was licking Josh’s hand. He said that Thomas just stood in the road looking into the headlights. “And then,” Josh stopped. He was silent for a moment and then started to cry. After a moment, he began talking in broken speech between sobs. He explained that he had hit the brakes and was sliding toward Thomas when suddenly a big black dog ran in front of his car and knocked Thomas into the ditch. Josh said he thought the big dog was going fast enough to get out of the way, but the front corner of the car hit the dog in the middle of his body.

Everyone stayed in the car for a while because they were afraid to get out. Josh said he just couldn’t believe what had happened. He knew the big dog was dead, and he was trying to understand why a dog would give his life to save another dog. He thought about how hard it would be for a person to give his or her life for someone else, but this dog just did it with no hesitation. After talking a bit and making sure each other was okay, the boys got out of the car and walked to the front of the vehicle to find the right headlight destroyed and some minor body damage in the area around the headlight. They looked for the dog and did not see him right away. Then they found him on the side of the road about twenty-five feet in front of the car. Josh said that he and one of his friends carried the dog off the road and laid him in the ditch. I asked Josh if he did anything else to the body. Josh was quiet for a moment and then said, “I closed his eyes.”

I told him I had noticed that Judah’s eyes were closed, and I said, “Judah would have appreciated that.”

He asked in a surprised voice, “The dogs name was Judah?”

I said, “Yes, the big black dog was named Judah.” Josh started to cry again, and I thought to myself, this kid is really emotional.

Finally, Josh told me that he had really been struggling with what to do with his life since graduating from high school. He didn’t have enough money for college, and he didn’t want to go into the Army or some other service because he didn’t want to end up in Iraq. He had been bouncing around from one fast food job to another up until the accident. He told me how seeing Judah save Thomas had changed the way he looked at life. “If a dog can be fearless and courageous enough to save another dog, then I should be brave enough to try and help other people. So anyway, I enlisted in the Marines and I start training next month. That’s why I came here today.

“I couldn’t leave for training knowing that whoever owned that dog, Judah, didn’t know how the dog had died. So I came out here and started knocking on doors, and your neighbor told me you had lost a dog.”

“So,” I asked, “why does the name Judah have so much significance?”

He said, “Because I’ve been praying a lot, asking God if I’m doing the right thing by joining the Marines. Now I know I am. Your dog’s name was Judah, so I know I’m doing the right thing.”

Again I asked, “But why Judah, why does Judah mean it’s right for you to join the Marines?”

I thought he was going to cry again, but instead Josh looked me in the eyes and with the strongest voice he had used all day, he said, “I know that God wants me in the Marines because the recruiter that signed me up was named Gunnery Sergeant Judah Kahn.”

“Wow,” I said. I thought about how Judah was affecting people even after his death. I remembered how important it was to Jessica that he be named Judah instead of Moses. I thought about how Thomas and Judah would normally have been down at the river, not on the road as they were that night. And what was a kid from Rochester doing, driving down an old stagecoach road in rural Mantorville on a Monday night?

I looked over and saw Josh smiling for the first time since he arrived. He was looking down at Thomas, who was still licking Josh’s hand. I said, “Thomas has really taken to you; it normally takes him a lot longer to get to know a new person.”

Josh said that Thomas acted the same way in the ditch the night of the accident, “My friend and I had just placed Judah in the ditch, and I looked at his eyes and decided to close them. As I ran my hand over Judah’s face to close his eyes, Thomas came up and started licking my hand.” I told Josh that Thomas sensed his concern for Judah and that Thomas was showing his appreciation by licking his hand. I told Josh that Thomas would always remember his scent and that Josh would always be Thomas’s friend.

The room then went silent. I’m sure that Josh, like me, was reflecting on what we had just discovered by putting our stories together. After a moment, Josh stood up and said he needed to get back to Rochester, so Thomas and I walked him to the door. I gave Josh my card and asked him to write or e-mail me when he could and thanked him for telling me about Judah. He thanked me for understanding and said he was glad he came out to see me. After a firm handshake, he left.

I watched Josh walk to his car, and then I looked down at Thomas and thought about all of the things God had put in motion over two years ago, things that inspired a young man and saved the life of a little black dog. I watched Josh drive off and then looked at Thomas again and said, “God must have something big planned for you guys.”

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