Spirit Animals

I really never expected something like this, another paranormal experience. I thought that since I had done the Ouija Board more than a year ago everything would go away and I would be left alone. There are slight signs that spirits are around me, but not enough to really freak out. There have been slightly more significant events that have made me wonder just what is hanging around me. I think it's an animal along with some people, but unlike those that can get the feeling that someone's there and see it in their mind, I don't. I have to put 2 and 2 together in order to figure out just what's going on.

It was an early morning in the autumn I believe when my new German shepherd puppy ran out of the yard yet again. I'm a huge animal lover and was severely worried about her being hit by a car. Our house is situated in a small neighborhood that's surrounded on farms on two sides and a freeway on the other two sides. Sure the freeway was about a mile away, but when you're worried your mind jumps to the worst possible situations. I ran outside in my pajamas, my mother calling after me to tell me that the dog would show up soon. Our dog--or rather puppy--was around 7 or 8 months old at the time and was rather small. She had the usual German shepherd markings, brown and very noticeable black. When I ran outside I had just gotten out of bed, hair in a mess and no contacts in. I couldn't see a thing, but was sure I could make out the outline of my dog. I called her name, yelled it, whistled for her but she didn't come. I looked around for her and my eyes landed on a rather large, empty lot at the bottom of the hill I live on.

My dog stood there; at least I thought it was her. She looked a little bigger and I thought of the saying 'they grow up so fast'; I guess now I knew what it meant. She was sniffing the ground, her fur seemed to be more reddish-brown and her tail was fluffier. When she heard her name she looked up at me and froze in her tracks. At this point I was mad that she wasn't coming and I hollered to her "Get up here right now!" My dog may have her dumb moments, but this was unbelievable, she just wouldn't budge. Finally she moved, but not in my direction. She walked off into the woods and I went in to tell my mom. As I walked in the door, my dog practically pushed me over by jumping up on me. I was speechless, what did I see at that empty lot I wondered. "Where did you find her?" I asked, still not believing what I had seen, a wild dog, a cat, a fox? "She was in the neighbor's yard." The neighbor's behind us had two collies and I learned later how much my dog loved to play with them. This didn't help answer the question though, what did I see?

Now I think it was a fox, but the only species of fox that lives in Minnesota is the red fox, also the largest type of fox. After some research, I learned that red foxes weigh only up to 15 pounds and are around 40 centimeters tall. Compare that to an 8-month-old German shepherd and you can pretty much tell the difference. Though my dog was small she had to at least weight 65 pounds and be 62 centimeters tall. Glasses or not I'm sure I could have seen the difference. But for some reason this animal looked to have the markings of a fox but it was bigger than my dog. Now, I wouldn't have shared this story if it had just ended there. But on Friday the 15th I was doing my homework at the kitchen table with my dog sitting at the sliding glass door staring at the trees that separates my neighbor's yard from ours.

She began to growl and bark at absolutely nothing. I brushed it off; after all, she's been doing this at both the sliding glass door and the front window for around a month now. She whined to be let outside and I refused. I had tried to open up the door and let her outside when the barking first started but she wouldn't go outside, she would run away. I turned my attention back to my homework and saw a black shape run through the backyard. I didn't know what it was, but it has a distinct animal shape. I jumped up and went to the door, trying to see what was going on but when I got there the backyard was empty. No animal prints were in the snow except my dog's prints. The only problem was, my dog's paw prints could only be seen going to the neighbor's with the collies and the black shape I saw was headed for the neighbors to the left. I was rather clueless and my dog was nowhere to be found.

I wonder now, instead of whining to be let out, is my dog whining because she's afraid? I look out the windows every time she begins to bark, but I see nothing. This only happens when I'm alone with her, why just when I'm alone? I mean, you'd think she'd at least bark when the family is home, but no, just when it's me. I've also been seeing little black shapes in my backyard that duck behind things when I turn to get a better look at them. My dad has told me that when he takes the dog for a walk around the block he'll let her off the leash to chase animals. He told me that there's always this fox at the empty lot that my dog will chase, but he just catches glimpses of it and says that it's just a small little thing, like the size of a tiny dog. I asked him about a larger fox and my dad shook his head. My question is this, what did I see? What is my dog barking at, if anything? Could a wild fox get to be bigger than a German shepherd? Thanks for reading!