I have a French Bulldog called Sebastian.  We are so close and seem to connect to each other via some form of telepathic communication, there are times when I really do feel like he knows what I am thinking and vice versa.

Seb, as we like to call him, has a licking habit, a licking human habit. He particularly likes to lick me whilst I am trying to do a morning yoga session.  A few weeks back, he decided that instead of chewing on my ear whilst I performed a laying down twist, he would find something else to chew.  As I got up from my stretch I noticed that he had a white feather in his mouth before I could reach him to pull it out, he swallowed it whole.  “Well let’s hope it brings you luck today Seb,” I said.

On that same morning, Seb and I were taking our normal stroll across the fields behind my house.  Seb was running off the lead, his favourite pastime.  As we approached the end of the field that backs along a very busy main road, I made a mental note to put his lead back on.  Seb is usually very good with recall and normally comes back on first whistle blow.  On this morning there were a few things that I hadn’t taken into consideration.  The first was that we had recently come back from Devon, where Seb had the freedom to roam around the green countryside and along the beach, with no cars to worry him or us.  The second thing was that we were now full into the autumn season and the trees and hedges were pretty much bare. This meant that the normally thick hedge that separates the field to the main road was now naked twigs and exposing small gaps, gaps that are the perfect size for a stocky French Bulldog to escape through.

No sooner had I seen the gap, Seb had seen it too, he looked at me, I looked at him, mentally I told him to not even think about, mentally he told me that today he was ignoring my advice.  He dashed and scrambled through the hole, leading to the busy road.  I yelled.  I yelled, I yelled and then I screamed his name.  I could not see Seb.  He was the other side now, he was where the busy main road is.  The hedge was far too high for me to see, I could only hear the sound of zooming vehicles passing at around forty to fifty miles an hour. The entrance to the field was such a distance, I calculated how long it would take me to run to get him, 30 seconds, a bit more?  In that time he would be squashed or lost, taken by someone.  I was about to lose my boy.

I called him again, hoping he would find the hole and come back.  But he didn’t.  I could hear someone walking the other side of the hedge, pushing a pram. I wanted to shout out and ask them to help catch him, but I thought it would be irresponsible if it was a mother and child.  So I stood there and looked up to the sky and said: “please angels, save my little Seb, please don’t let him get hit or lost, please help me!!”.

I started to run up along the field and then, before my eyes I saw the black, pounding head of Sebastian, he had found his way to the park entrance from the main road and was bounding toward me at full speed!  He ran into my arms and I swiftly and shakily attached his lead to his harness.  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry!  How the hell did he find his way back?  How was he not dead?

I walked him to the entrance of the field where the person who I heard walking with the pram met me.  It was a mum, she looked so happy to see Seb on his lead.  “Did you see what happened?” I asked.  “Yes!  Your dog ran through the hedge, down the bank and then toward the main road.  I felt for certain he would get hit by a car but all of the sudden he just stopped at the curb, looked up and the dashed along the pavement, up the steps and into the field entrance!” she said with a relieved look on her face.  I thanked her and we carried on walking home.

I cried as we walked back, I was so shocked that he was ok, that he didn’t run out in the road, that something made him stop, even think about his actions. French Bulldogs are not known for their intelligence skills, in fact, they are known as the clowns of the dog world! What made him turn around?

As we got inside the house and I unleashed him, I thought about my angel prayer. Angels have helped me on so many occasions in the past, I felt sure that they had at this time.  I was soon given validation of this.  As I walked up the stairs, I saw a large feather on the top stair, that wasn’t there before I left that morning.  I smiled to myself and thanked my angels.

When my husband got home, I told him the story and about the angel feather, my husband just rolled his eyes and said: “we have feathers everywhere, you have all those dream catcher things, it’s from that, not an angel, Seb was just lucky!”.

I thought about this and let the seed of doubt enter into my mind.  “ok Angels, if it really was you that helped Seb today, give me another sign, give me a sign right now!”, with that, I looked at my phone as the red notification icon popped up on my Facebook profile.  I clicked on it and saw that someone had posted on the French Bull Dog fan page.  I hadn’t seen a post on there for months, and whenever there was one, I always wanted to see a dog like Seb, but the Frenchie’s they posted were always different colours to him.  Is this my sign, I thought?  If it is, make the dog of this photo look just like Seb, then I will believe!  I clicked on the notification and up popped this beautiful dog:

I smiled widely to myself, thanks angels, I said.

Sebastian Short – aged about 6 months in this photo:

Until next time,

Tanya