The Moonlit Road - The Coughing Dog

Collected and Adapted by Craig Dominey

Kristin had always been the "black sheep" of her family. She came from a rural and very conservative Middle Georgia clan, and had fought constantly with her parents since she was a child. Kristin wanted no part of the settled and routine life her parents had lead - she was an impulsive free-spirit who would travel to the far corners of the earth at a moment's notice, sometimes not even knowing where she was headed, or why.

Mill

So it came as no surprise when, a few weeks shy of her 30th birthday, Kristin announced that she was leaving her high-paying job at a major corporation to fulfill her life's dream - to become a professional sculptor. She sold her expensive suburban apartment and moved into an abandoned mill in one of the rougher areas of Atlanta. She planned on converting part of the space into a full-time studio and living area.

Her parents were horrified, especially when they learned that her studio was just a few miles down the road from the county jail. And Kristin didn't see the need to rig her studio with an expensive alarm system, for her neighbors seemed nice enough. But like every other discussion Kristin had with her father, his words of warning went in one ear and out the other.

So on her 30th birthday, her father took matters into his own hands and bought Kristin a guard dog - a Doberman named Bishop from the local humane society. The dog had been abused by his former owners, and had become mean and distrustful of humans. But Kristin always had a strong love for animals, and she took the poor dog into her care. In a matter of weeks, Bishop became very attached to Kristin, and extremely protective whenever anyone else would approach her.

Dog

One morning, Kristin came home from a trip to the hardware store to find Bishop lying in the middle of the floor, coughing and wheezing uncontrollably. She immediately rushed him to the local veterinarian, who performed a series of tests. After a while, the vet was satisfied that Bishop wasn't dangerously sick, but he couldn't figure out why the dog was still coughing.

"Don't worry," he told Kristin in his calm and soothing voice, "Bishop looks perfectly healthy. But I'd like to run some additional tests on him this afternoon. Why don't you go home and I'll call you when we know something. There's no sense in sitting in the waiting room all day."

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