Whose Dog Is This?

Last Saturday, Aoife and Sean got married in a small church near Cork. After the ceremony, everybody walked to a big white tent in a field by the river. There was music, there was food, and there was a very big cake.

During the first dance, a dog walked into the tent. It was a brown dog with long ears and a red collar. It wasn't afraid of anyone. It walked slowly between the tables and sat down next to the bride.

"Whose dog is this?" asked Aoife's mother. Nobody answered. "Is it yours?" she asked the groom's uncle. "No, mine is at home." She asked the cousins, the neighbors and the band. Everyone said the same thing: "It isn't ours."

The dog didn't care. It looked at the cake with big eyes. When nobody was looking, it stood on a chair and ate a piece. Aoife laughed. "Well, somebody likes my cake," she said. Sean gave it some water.

Then the dog did something strange. It walked to the door of the tent, stopped and looked back. It did this three times. "I think it wants us to follow it," said Sean's sister. So the bride, the groom and twenty guests followed the dog across the field.

The dog led them to the road, where an old man was walking slowly with a stick. "Bramble!" he shouted. "There you are!" He was looking for the dog all afternoon. "She hears music and she goes to it. She loves a party."

Aoife invited the old man to the wedding. He danced with the bride's grandmother, and Bramble slept under the cake table. In the wedding photos, there is a brown dog in the middle of everything. Nobody knows anything about her, except her name.