I want to tell you a small story about a piece of black bog oak.
It came into my life shortly after Missy did.
She was a rescue.
Starved.
Badly beaten before we got her.
At first she was nervous around everything.
After a while she settled with me and my partner.
She loved children.
She loved women.
Most men she didn’t know, she’d bark at and hide from.
I’m telling you this because of something that happened last June.
There’s a small fairy fort on the land here.
A low ring of earth under hawthorn.
We’ve never gone near it with machinery.
Never lifted a stone.
Not out of belief, one way or the other.
Just respect.
And habit.
After a hard storm, I was walking Missy early one morning.
The ground was soaked.
Near the fort, a piece of dark wood showed through the grass.
I’d walked that path for years.
Never seen it before.
The wood itself was dry.
Missy sniffed it once, then lay down beside it.
Head on her paws.
Breathing slow.
That wasn’t like her.
I called her.
She looked at me, then put her head down again.
I had to touch her to get her to move.
I brought the wood home and left it in the back room.
I didn’t know what to make of it at the time.
What I didn’t know then was that this wasn’t the first time something like that had come up near that fort.
And it wasn’t the first time it had been meant for a dog.
I left the wood where it was for a while.
In the back room.
Out of the way.
It didn’t feel like something to rush.
A few weeks later I brought it with me to see my granny.
She’s over a hundred now.
Still sharp.
Still living on her own.
I didn’t tell her much.
Just put the piece on the table.
She knew what it was straight away.
Didn’t pick it up.
Just looked at it for a long time.
Then she nodded.
She told me about a family who worked these fields long before my time.
They kept big dogs — wolfhounds, she thought.
She remembered the collars first.
Each dog had a small dark piece tied on.
Plain wood.
Nothing fancy.
Bog oak, the girl had told her.
Their father had found pieces near the fort after storms.
Not often.
Just sometimes.
There was an old understanding in the family that when it came up like that, it was for the dogs.
Not for luck.
Not to make them fierce.
Just to steady them.
They kept one piece in the house as well.
Usually on the mantel.
When a dog died, the collar piece went back into the ground near where it had come up.
The house piece was buried with the dog.
No ceremony.
No words said.
Just something that was done.
Granny didn’t tell me what to think about it.
She never does.
She just said it quietly, the way she speaks about things people used to do without needing a reason.
That stayed with me.
I didn’t do anything with the wood straight away.
Eventually, I took it out and worked it by hand.
Slowly.
Just enough to make a small piece.
One for Missy’s collar.
Another for the mantel.
I wasn’t expecting anything to change.
What I noticed first was myself.
I felt a bit steadier.
The low worry I carried with her — listening for movement at night, counting how long she was out of sight — it eased.
Not gone.
Just quieter.
Missy slept deeper.
She ran more easily in the field.
Nothing dramatic.
Just less edge to her.
I don’t know if the oak had anything to do with it.
Maybe I was ready to let go of something and she felt that.
People started to comment.
“She’s very settled,” they’d say.
I didn’t offer an explanation.
I still don’t.
All I know is that something came up after that storm.
It was carried for a while.
And it seemed to be enough.
From time to time, something else is added here.