A Strange Encounter: The Mysterious Man & the Dog
A Strange Encounter: The Mysterious Man & the Dog
by Rain Yao | Charleston, WV
I set out from Villafranca del Bierzo to O Cebreiro as I had every other morning on the Camino. The town lay silent, almost ghostly around 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning. Shuttered windows, empty streets, and the quiet figure of a pilgrim statue marking my way. I moved quickly through, my footsteps echoing on the cobblestones, and soon the road carried me downward from the mountain village toward the highway where metal safety barriers lined the edge of the path.
That’s when I saw him: a dog wedged between the rails.
At first glance he looked like a stray, mottled and rough, his face and body blotched with spots that gave him an almost unsettling appearance. Then I heard a man’s voice calling for him although I saw no one nearby. The dog strained forward, as if desperate to push through the narrow opening. He would lunge, stop, lunge again, stop again—trapped in a cycle of effort and failure. Time stretched as I stood watching. Frozen there for a long while, he remained unable to move forward yet unwilling to turn back.
It struck me how human he seemed at that moment. How often do we find ourselves in the same position, wedged between past and future, straining toward what lies ahead, yet held fast by something unseen? We push. We stop. We push again. Sometimes the way forward simply does not exist.
Finally, after much struggle, the dog changed course. Instead of continuing to force himself forward, he carefully backed out. Step by step he freed himself, retreating until the barrier released him. And with that, he was gone. He trotted ahead as though nothing had happened.
A few minutes later, I saw him again walking beside a man in a hoodie. As I approached, I noticed the man had only one arm. His hood concealed most of his face, but when I stole a glance from the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of scar tissue. Something about him unnerved me. His presence felt blurred, hovering between the real and the unreal. My chest tightened and instinctively I quickened my pace in an effort to put distance between us.
After a while, I turned to look back. The man and his dog had vanished. The road lay empty behind me with only the roadside barriers glinting in the morning light and the long climb to O Cebreiro still ahead.
And yet, the image of that dog remained: struggling, stopping, struggling again, until finally choosing to retreat. A reminder that sometimes freedom is not in pressing forward at all costs, but in the humility to step back and begin again.
