As noted in the other two accounts, I'm working through my encounters in the order I encountered them in my life. That is the main reason I'm sharing this one, since it's fairly uneventful, and could color my father in a worse light than is fair to him.
As I've said before, we live in the country, and thus there are strays all over. Some from growing up strays, some from idiots deciding to drop them off on the roadside. The large dog that is a part of the story was a stray in life, though we never knew why. He was a friendly dog, and I played with him a couple times before he discovered our little part pekingese/part poodle female. To put it politely, they ended up getting to know each other.
This enraged my Dad of course, especially given his old-fashioned, Southern, upbringing. He grabbed his rifle, fully intending to just scare the dog off by shooting near it. By the time he got a bullet in the rifle, the dog was across the road near a large tree, and Dad intended to shoot the base of the tree. However, it being night, and his anger, threw off his aim, and unfortunately, the dog paid for his affair with his life.
Dad grieved for the dog as he didn't mean to shoot it. He put the rifle up and went alone into the bedroom. With him, that is a strong indicator he cried as the man lived and breathed the old motto, "Men don't cry." He later came out and we all thought it was over.
The next night proved us wrong however, a light fog rolled in, and we saw a dog standing next to the tree. This happened a couple nights in a row, both with and without fog, before Dad decided he was going to go see what was drawing the dog to that place. We'd buried the deceased dog with our pets, and Dad was as stubborn about ghosts as my Mom and her mother were. He came back and told us that the dog must have ran away through the field before Dad got there, and there was nothing to worry about.
This went on and on until the puppies were born. Each night, standing by that tree would be the "unknown" dog, and Dad would swear up and down it couldn't be the dog he'd accidentally shot. He did joke a couple times that he wished it was because, in his mind, that would mean it wasn't as dead as he'd thought it was.
After the puppies were born, the dog appeared one last night, and hasn't been seen since. You could argue that the dog was a normal dog, but why would a normal dog be drawn to the specific spot the other died? There was no meat there, and even if initially there was, that would have been disposed of rather quickly. It wasn't the area, it was a hay field at the time.
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