Lost and Found

Yesterday, the dog went missing.

I let him out in the morning before we left for church. Then, we came home right after the service, so I decided to head straight back out to attend the 10:15 Mass—I didn’t even go into the house, just hopped in the driver’s seat and took off.

Brian made ham ‘n’ bean soup for Sunday dinner, and even with the fragrance of the cooking ham in the air, the dog did not make an appearance in the kitchen. Nor did he show up while we were eating. That was odd, but I figured he was just hiding somewhere either sleeping or cowering in fear from the weather. (Dodger is deathly afraid of thunder and lightning, and even a light sprinkle will have him shaking in his little doggy paws. It’s been thundering almost constantly for a week, and raining off and on.)

At 8:30 p.m., when the boys were getting set for bed, we still hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the dog. I went searching the house, calling, looking under beds. Nothing.

I started to panic. Often, when we come home from being out and about, he’ll greet us at the door, even coming out into the driveway in his excitement over our return. I couldn’t remember seeing him that morning when we got back, but it occurred to me that he may have come out and then not gone back in. Brian and Urban went in, and I drove off in the van with the little boys. What if he was just out there all alone, and what if he started sniffing the ground and walking…..? It would not be unusual at all for him to drift from our yard, especially since he’s old and can barely see for cataracts over both eyes.

[Here I must inform you that Dodger is the last of three pets we've had. One of our cats went berserk after we moved to Texas and ran out onto a busy road and got hit by an SUV. The other cat went berserk after the move to North Carolina. He just took off one day and never came back. So we've been through the stress of losing pets before. Lesson: Cats don't like moving!]

I’d already gotten my pajamas on, but I just couldn’t relax. So I changed back into regular clothes, grabbed a flashlight and my cellphone, and went out to walk the neighborhood. As I was stressing out and preparing to go, Brian was sitting calmly on the couch, grading papers. He’s not a worrier, and he’s not terribly fond of the dog, either. (The dog can be a pain in the butt, it’s true. Most of us in the family are driven nuts by him at least once or twice a week. But he’s our pet, and we do love him in spite of his goofy tendencies.)

So there I was, walking the neighborhood at 9 p.m. It was almost dark. And then it started to rain. I didn’t find the dog. I did hear a bunch of dogs barking on the other side of one of the lakes—Dodger would have have to have wandered awfully far to get way over there. But he’d been missing for about 11 hours, so it was certainly possible.

When I got back to the house, I stood in the driveway in the pouring rain, praying to God to please protect my poor little dog and bring him home safely. I asked Mary and Joseph and Lucy and Jude to pray with me for the return of the dog. But oh, I was so sure I was not going to see him again.

Came back in and continued worrying, tried to come up with a game plan for how I would start searching for the dog the next day—talk to the neighbors, call the animal shelter and the vet, make posters. Just the thought of all that got me even more stressed. Not to mention the fact that we’re planning a trip to Mom and Dad’s over the 4th. What if someone found the dog and we weren’t even here to claim him?

I try so hard not to be a worrywart, but I’m my grandmother’s granddaughter and my mother’s daughter: I worry in spite of myself.

Went to bed and knew I was in for a long, sleepless night of worry. Imaging my poor little pet out in the driving rain, scared out of his (very few) wits. How would he ever make it home?

I was so tense, my stomach was churning.

And then Brian popped his head in the door and said, “Kim, Dodger’s under the bed in the playroom. He won’t come out.”

I wanted to laugh! At myself, at Brian, at the dog. “Thank God!” I said. And I meant it!

We went into the playroom. “How on earth did he get under there?” Trust me, the toys in the playroom were about a foot deep just then. I’ve done some clean up today, but last night, there were so many stuffed animals and books, even right around the edge of the bed, that it didn’t seem possible to me that the dog could have gotten under there. That’s why I hadn’t bothered to look.

Finally, we coaxed him out from under the bed. He looked at me with his big brown glazed-over eyes, then turned around and went straight back to where he’d been. He didn’t come out until this morning, around 6:30.

What’s interesting to me is the difference I felt, physically, between being sick with worry and being so suddenly relieved of that stress. And then, too, as the adrenaline stopped pumping, it was the weirdest feeling—all those tensed up muscles just letting go. I wanted to weep, it felt so good to have that burden lifted.

But all this did make me resolve to keep a closer eye on things in the future!