To grow sugary dates in the sand, Siwa’s farmers must first make the desert suitable for farming. An oasis (绿洲) in Egypt, Siwa has been home to humans for thousands of years. Since ancient times, the oasis has hosted farms producing some of the most valuable dates in Egypt, and sugary dates have appeared on Egyptians, tables.

The desert environment in Siwa is not quite fit for plants to grow. For example, the water there contains much salt. However, with local people’s efforts, the Siwa oasis contains complex agricultural fields, where date trees, crops and other plants grow in harmony. That impressed me a lot during my visit to the oasis. To make a new piece of field, farmers first remove the top soil and replace it with a mixture of sand and waste matter from animals. The first plants are medicinal plants. Then, farmers plant date trees and olive trees. These farming skills are passed down from generation to generation.

To grow date trees is demanding. And it takes 10 years for a new date tree to mature, but once it does, the tree produces generous fruit: around 110 pounds of dates per year. Each farmer picks dates with the skilled hands. They climb the trees using nothing more than a belt. In total, Siwa grows more than 25,000 tons of dates from 280,000 trees per year.

The dates can be eaten fresh, or made dry. Every part of the date tree is significant in Siwa, from leaves made into beds and boxes to wood used to build houses. And then, of course, there’s the fruit itself. The dates can be cooked with goat meat or mixed with eggs for breakfast. They can also be mixed with flour, water, and olive oil, and boiled slowly to make a local dessert.

Local farmers once developed many unique date varieties, which their camels carried to Cairo. But later many of those varieties perished. And today only several major varieties remain and some have become quite rare and been at risk. The 1985 construction of a road in the oasis made the survival of local agricultural tradition even tougher.

It was Monday. Mrs Smith's dog was hungry, but there was not any meat in the house.

Considering that there was no better way, Mrs Smith took a piece of paper, and wrote the following words on it: "Give my dog half a pound of meat. " Then she gave the paper to her dog and said gently."Take this to the butcher（屠夫）and he's going to give you your lunch today.”

Holding the piece of paper in its mouth, the dog ran to the butcher's. It gave the paper to the butcher. The butcher read it carefully, recognized that it was really the lady's handwriting and soon did it as he was asked to. The dog was very happy, and ate the meat up at once.

At noon, the dog came to the shop again. It gave the butcher a piece of paper again. After reading it, he gave it half a pound of meat once more.

The next day, the dog came again exactly at noon. And as usual, it brought a piece of paper in the mouth. This time, the butcher did not take a look at the paper, and gave the dog is meat, for he had regarded the dog as one of his customers. But, the dog came again at four o'clock. And the same thing happened once again. To the butcher's more surprise, it came for the third time at six o'clock, and brought with it a third piece of paper. The butcher felt a bit puzzled. He said to himself, "This is a small dog. Why does Mrs Smith give it so much meat to eat today?"

Looking at the piece of paper, he found that there were not any words on it!

Kwane Stewart stepped outside a Modesto, California, convenience store with his morning coffee and noticed a homeless man, Tom Bissell, sitting with his back against the building. A small dog sat in his lap. Stewart, a vet (兽医) at an animal hospital, noticed its injured fur and skin. He approached the man and offered to bring medication for the dog's skin, a gift the man readily accepted.

“I remember returning a week later, and the hair was coming back the rash (皮疹) was gone,” Stewart told the Modesto Bee. Tom said his dog was finally sleeping at night again because it was no longer feeling restless for its illness. “‘And you know,’ he said, ‘I’m sleeping at night.’ He started to cry, and that got me touched too,” Stewart says.

Stewart was addicted. “When you do good deeds, there is something you get in return that feels much larger. I knew I wanted to keep doing it, "he told medium.com.

Today, Stewart, 50, has his own practice in town, yet he still finds time for street pets. He's helped roughly 400 animals since 2011.

There's a great need for his kind of help. About 25 percent of Modesto's homeless population owns a pet, but there are few healthcare options available to them. To fill that gap, Stewart can often be found wandering dark streets and underpasses (地下通道), anywhere he thinks the homeless might be camped out. Stewart pays for almost all of it out of his own pocket. For those expensive procedures, he set up a GoFundMe account to help cover treatment costs. “I don't ever want to have to turn anybody away,” he explains.

“To have somebody like Dr. Stewart come out here to take care of my dog just because it's the right thing to do, that's huge.” Joe, one of the dog owners, said in a video that Stewart posted on the GoFundMe page.