Sirko the Faithful Dog

There was once a farmer who had a dog called Sirko. Sirko was already very old. He walked with a slight limp and he could no longer run. The farmer saw that Sirko was no longer useful, and so he drove him off the farm.

Poor old Sirko was wandering around in the fields when he saw a wolf coming towards him.

“Why are you walking up and down?” asked the wolf.

“Oh, the farmer threw me out, so I’m just wandering around and I don’t know where to go,” old Sirko lamented.

The wolf thought for a moment, and then asked: “Do you want me to get the farmer to take you back in?”

“Please do, my friend,” replied Sirko. “I will repay you somehow.”

So the wolf told him his plan: “We’ll do it like this. Soon, your farmer and his wife will come out to mow the meadow. The woman will put her baby down in the hay, like she always does. I will bound over and try to take the baby. But at the very last moment, you’ll run up and scare me so much with your barking that I will take fright and let the baby go. The farmer is sure to be grateful that you’ve saved his baby’s life.”

And so it was. At harvest time, the farmer and his wife came out into the fields. The farmer’s wife laid her little baby down on the hay and set to work alongside her husband. All of a sudden – calamity! The wolf came bounding through the grainfield and picked the baby up in its jaws!

Thankfully, Sirko appeared as if out of nowhere and came up behind the wolf, who ran away from him as fast as his legs…