Buckets of rain fell from the sky while lightning bolts shot through the air. The front door was open when I walked past the screen door. The house was quiet besides the drops hitting the roof. “What’s that noise?” I asked myself. I looked out the front door to find nothing but running water. Then, I looked down.

There stood a golden retriever; a large, soaking wet, crying dog. Tears immediately fell from the corners of my eyes as I called for my mother. She looked just as shocked as I was. I ran for the phone to hand to my mother who had been outside to keep the dog company. I slightly opened the door and the dog bolted through the front door sprinting through the house as if it was his own.

The clean floors became wet and muddy and the large animal rolled on the floors sniffing his surroundings. We panicked trying to catch the dog to send outside. Although it was scary to have a strange dog in the house, we couldn’t hold back our laughter.

Finally we got the dog outside into our backyard. My mother had called the police by then and they didn’t have any reports of a missing dog. When the rain stopped, we waited outside to see if anyone would come up the street.

We saw two people walking up our block. We called out to them to see if they had lost a dog. It turns out they did. “We were taking him for a walk and the storm scared him right out of his collar,” the woman explained. “His name is Rusty.”

Rusty was at the gate waiting to be reunited with his owners. My mother opened the gate and rusty came over to me and sat right next to my feet. The owners were relieved to see Rusty but laughed when they saw him run to me. They called Rusty to come to them multiple times, but he wouldn’t budge. I walked to the owners and he followed me. As much as I didn’t want to give up Rusty, I had to. They put his collar back around his neck and thanked us for taking care of him.

I turned to my mother, tearing up once again and asked, “Why did Rusty choose us?”