Free Huck: The Remarkable True Story of How One Lost Puppy Taught a Family--and a Whole Town--about Hope and Happy Endings by Janet Elder Page A

She and her husband generously hosted a dinner party to celebrate the end of my cancer treatments.
    Michael stood up in front of a room filled with my friends and colleagues and said, “I am really proud of the way my mother has powered her way through breast cancer.”
    When I looked around the room and thought about how much each of the people there had done for me and my family, I was so choked up, I could not speak. I had had a lot of help getting through it all. The truth of the matter is, I was the one who had cancer, but everyone in that room, along with many people who were not there, had gotten me through it. It was their deep affection and care and compassion that had powered me through. It was Rich’s undaunted spirit and Michael’s bravery.
    The holidays quickly approached. I was especially thankful that year for our many blessings and looking forward to the joy of the season more than usual. Since Rich, Michael, and I celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah, all December long it feels as though we are either celebrating or planning to celebrate. Our most cherished tradition is cutting down our own Christmas tree. When Michael was about six, Rich located a Christmas tree farm, because he knew it was one of the happiest memories of my childhood.
    Ever since then, every December we bundle up and drive an hour and a half to the four-hundred-acre working Jones Family Farm in Shelton, Connecticut, which has been in the Jones Family since the mid-1800s. There are two hundred acres of Christmas trees of all types—Fraser fir, Angel white pine, Douglas fir, Scotch pine, balsam fir, and blue spruce.
    Once there, we park the car, pick up a saw from a basket filled with saws, and climb a path up the mountainside, the snow and ice crunching beneath our boots, in search of the perfect tree. My find always comes early on, sometimes halfway up the mountain, but Michael and Rich always insist the best trees are at the top. So we trudge on.
    The Jones Family Farm is a happy place. During one of our hunts, a young man with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a freshly chopped tree in the other came out from the thicket of trees and asked if we’d take a picture of his girlfriend and him. Moments earlier, he had asked her to marry him and she had said, “Yes.”
    With a brand-new puppy at home, I thought we’d forgo the tree cutting. But tradition being what it is, we didn’t. We left Huck at home, drove through the snow to the farm, climbed the mountain, and debated which of several trees Huck would like. Michael, who by then was doing more and more of the sawing, made the first cut and started sawing. He kept at it until his hands were so cold inside his gloves he could barely move his fingers. He turned the saw over to Rich who finished the job.
    Once the tree was felled, we carried it down the mountain to a spot where the farm hands took it, put it through a baler (a conelike device that encased it in twine), and strapped it to the top of our car. We then joined the other people crazy enough to do this and drank hot cider and ate cranberry chocolate chip cookies around an outdoor fire. It was Christmas the way I remembered it.
    When we got home, we carried the tree through the front door and set it in the stand. Huck didn’t quite know what to make of it and started barking at it. He soon stopped and settled himself underneath it, where he stayed while we adorned it with lights and ornaments.
    We hung four stockings that year, one for Rich, one for Michael, one for me, and one for Huck. Huck’s stocking had been a gift from the Finkelsteins. It was red and green and had Huck’s name embroidered across the top. Down the side was the word woof and three paw prints.
    On Christmas Eve, before he went to bed, Michael stuffed Huck’s stocking full of gifts he had bought and carefully wrapped for him. There was no mention of the gifts Michael might receive; he was completely focused on Huck. “Do you think Huck will really