Free Chicken Soup for the Beach Lover's Soul by Jack Canfield Page A

laughter, music, and happiness could bring down a house, our beach house would have become a pile of lumber a long time ago! Daddy may not be there in body— but I know that when I look up in the sky at night, there is one very special star looking down on me, and “he” is giving me that same special wink. I am pretty sure that he has a constant smile on his face, particularly because now that I’m fifty-nine, those bikinis are history!
    Susan Allsbrook Darke
    AUTHOR’S NOTE: After nine years of commuting back and forth from work to beach and beach to work, we have put our home in Virginia on the market, and are moving to—guess where?— THE OUTER BANKS, or “OBX” to us locals!
    (Now I will be able to see my own personal “Winking Daddy Star” every night for the rest of my life!)

Harry and George
    A nimals share with us the privilege of having a soul.
    Pythagoras
    The day after Christmas, my sister and I started looking forward to the fifteenth of June. That was the day our parents loaded up the cars and we moved to a ramshackle cottage on the bay for the rest of the summer. It was a child’s idea of heaven on earth: late nights fishing on the wharf, barefoot days in bathing suits and boats, and meals on a big screened porch under lazy ceiling fans. Every summer seemed better than the last—until the summer we lost George.
    George and his brother, Harry, were golden retrievers. You never saw one without the other, whether they were crashing through tall saw grass or chasing bait-stealing herons off neighboring wharves. When they did get separated, Harry would bark until George found him. We all loved those dogs like they were our own, but they really belonged to an old salt known to everyone as the Captain.
    One afternoon during this particular summer, Harry and George laid down for a nap under some hydrangea bushes. After an hour or so, Harry woke up, but George didn’t. All of the children, most of the mothers, and even a few of the fathers could be seen sniffling back the tears when they heard Harry barking for his brother. The Captain was almost as pitiful as Harry, who finally gave up barking altogether. But the worst of it was that when he quit barking, he also stopped eating. He wouldn’t touch dog food, ignored his favorite doggie treats, even turned his nose up at a cheeseburger.
    We were so worried that on the fifth night of Harry’s fast, as we ate our supper of fried speckled trout, corn steaming on the cob, and fresh tomatoes, I asked Mama what to do. She said to pray for an angel to help Harry.
    That night I lay in bed under the slumber-inducing, back-and-forth breeze of an oscillating fan and pondered Harry’s plight. I was pretty sure that angels only dealt with people, and I had certainly never heard of them involving themselves in dogs’ problems. But just in case, I prayed myself to sleep.
    The next morning after breakfast Mama gave me a sausage with instructions to take it to Harry. I found him and the Captain sitting on the end of their wharf. I waved the sausage under Harry’s nose, but he didn’t blink. There’s never an angel around when you need one, I thought. Harry got up and started toward the house. His huge head was so low it almost dragged on the wharf boards, and I could tell he was weak from not eating. The Captain shook his old head and sighed.
    A sudden splash made us turn out of habit to see what kind of fish it was. But the smiling face of a dolphin broke the dark water, and even the Captain had to smile back at her. The dolphin made a little dolphin squeak. A deep growl made me look up toward the house. Harry was on the deck, his ears all perked up. The dolphin rolled and splashed like they do, then did something you see trained dolphins do, but rarely get to see done by your average bay dolphin. Whoosh! Up she went like a rocket, silver and shining against the blue of summer sky. The Captain and I were