The LeMiatres had a very nice big dog. Whenever we went to visit them, we usually stayed most of the day because it was fairly far away, and I spent all my time playing with the dog. One spring day, we went to see them and the dog wasn't there. When I asked where he was, Jean LeMaitre said that he had taken him hunting over the winter, and somehow the dog got shot. Jean tried to save him but he lost too much blood. The ground was frozen, so Jean made him a grave under a pile of leaves and branches, and put a little cross over it.
This made me very sad because he was a wonderful dog and still young.
About a month later, we got a phone call from Miche that the dog had come back. Someone had found him and unburied him and taken him to a vet. The vet was shocked that he was alive, though barely, and called someone at a university. The vet took him there, where they performed tests on him, and transfused him. Apparently, he had lost most of his blood, and had been in a deep freeze, like suspended animation. After transfusions and slow warming of his body, he came back to life. They got the LeMaitres' name from his collar. Needless to say, Jean and Miche were overjoyed.
Of course, the dog probably wasn't really dead, he was just at a low body temperature and his body functions had slowed down.
The university wrote some articles about him and he was on the TV news once. You could see the place where he had been shot, right in the chest. He was like a canine angel come back to earth. I never forgot him.
In a totally unrelated story, the LeMaitres' son had gone to Switzerland for vacation that winter. He and two of his friends were running for a train, and one of them attempted to jump up onto the train from the platform. He was hit by the train and decapitated. I remember hearing my parents discussing it when they thought I wasn't listening. I had nightmares about it.