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Brownie and Spotty were neighbor dogs who met every day to play together. Like pairs of dogs you can find in most anyneighborhood, these two loved each other and played together so often that they had worn a path through the grass of the field between theirrespectivehouses. neighborhood n. 附近、临近 respective adj. 各自的 One evening, Brownie's family noticed that Brownie hadn' t returned home. They went looking for him with no success. Brownie didn'tshow upthe next day, and, despite their efforts to find him, by the next week he was stillmissing. show up 露面 missing adj. 不见的 Curiously, Spotty showed up at Brownie's house alone. Barking,whiningand generallypesteringBrownie's human family. Busy with their own lives, they just ignored the nervous little neighbor dog. whine v. 哀鸣 pester v. 纠缠 Finally, one morning Spotty refused to take "no" for an answer. Ted, Brownie's owner, was steadilyharassedby thefurious,adamantlittle dog. Spotty followed Ted about, barking insistently, then darting toward a nearby empty lot and back, as if to say, "Follow me! It's urgent!" harassed adj. 厌烦的 furious adj. 狂怒的 adamant adj. 坚定的、固执的 Eventually, Ted followed thefranticSpotty across the empty lot as Spotty paused to race back and bark encouragingly. The little dog led the man under a tree, past clumps of trees, to adesolatespot a half mile from the house. There Ted found his beloved Brownie alive, one of his hind legs crushed in a steel leghold trap.Horrified, Ted now wished he'd taken Spotty's earlier appeals seriously. Then Ted noticed something quite remarkable. | 
