Buster and Slinky were best friends.  Buster was a little brown dog who just appeared at our house and stayed.  Slinky is a bassett hound that we bought about a year earlier.  Buster and Slinky played together every day.

    We have an underground fence around our yard to keep our dogs from getting in the road.  Slinky wears a collar that will shock her if she goes across the "invisible" fence.  She hardly ever crossed the line.  Slinky learned her lesson quickly.  Buster, however, did not understand the purpose of the fence and would run throught it, not returning for hours.  So, Buster did not wear a collar and could go outside the safe area.

     My family laughed that Buster would tease Slinky because she was trapped in the yard, while he was free to roam.  One day, Slinky had evidently heard enough because when we came home from school, they were both gone.  We thought they would come home before bedtime, but they did not.  My husband, Mark, drove down the road calling their names, but there was no sign of the escapees.  Mark got up early the next morning and drove around our neighborhood again.  He drove down gravel roads near our house and looked in all of the ditches and fields.  I asked our bus drivers to be on the lookout for Buster and Slinky.  Two days and two nights passed with not a single sign of either dog.

     Mark and I were going to Jackson to our school Christmas party when we discovered what had happened to Buster.  He had been run over on Highway 77.  We saw him dead on the side of the road.  Mark called my nephew, Brandon, and asked him to bury Buster.

     With Buster gone, we knew that we would probably never see Slinky again.  Our only hope was that she was not hurt somewhere, with no one to help her.  Our home was a very sad place.

   Imagine our surprise when our phone rang the next morning with the message "Slinky is at my house!  Come and get her!"  Dean, Mark's brother, who lives about 5 miles from our house, looked out his bedroom window to find Slinky walking around his pond!  She was dirty and she was hungry but we were glad to bring her home.

     Slinky misses her friend, Buster.  She does not have a buddy to run and play and wrestle with.  But one adventure was enough for Slinky because she has not crossed the line again.