She sees me from across the street. I know her type - rich, uppity, blind to a stray like me. My coat is even grungier today than usual; she’ll look me up and down with disdain and scurry away from me like I’m some vermin to avoid. Sometimes I am, I guess.

Like now, with my muzzle in a trash can that has been knocked over. She’s coming this way, I see from the side, probably to scold me, call the people who come with nets and hooks to me … but, she kneels nearby and says, “Hi, Buddy.”

There’s no way she could know my name. Nobody has said that name since I got lost years and years ago. But once, it was my name.

“Buddy, please, come here,” she called calmly, with tears in her eyes. Our eyes locked and I saw her: Abigail, the little girl who raised me from a pup to an adult. She was so much smaller then … me, too. It was really her. And she has come to save me.