The Kid I Babysat Drew The Dog Man Six Months Before I Saw It

I babysat for a family down the lane through my last two years of school. The girl was four and drew constantly, and most of it was the usual: horses with too many legs, a house, a sun in the corner.

Then she started drawing what she called "the tall dog that stands like Dad".

It was always in the same place on the page — right side, at the edge, half off the paper, which I now think is the most frightening formal choice I have ever seen a child make. It had a long face, and it stood upright, and the back legs bent the wrong way.

I asked her where she saw it. She said, "In the field where the horses aren't."

There is a field on the school road where there are no horses, because the fencing is bad. I want to be fair: a four-year-old walks past that field twice a day, and children draw monsters, and her father is a big man who does the thing where he lopes about being a dog to make her scream with laughter. It is all explainable. All of it.