Did I Kill the Dog?

That was the thought churning through my head the other day, when our beasty a.k.a. Maddy was no where to be found. Our electronic dog fence was vandalized by either the transient bears that roam through our back yard in search of rotten apples or the delinquent raccoons that prowl the night and love nothing more than to rabble rouse.

It was a sunny day and Maddy loves nothing more than to soak up the rays on the back deck. I was working and didn’t think of her until hours later when she was no where to be found. I called for her, patrolled the neighborhood, enlisted the help of the local animal control officer, asked the trash man to keep an eye out, and set every kid with a bike on patrol. I went down to the river, to the dog park, even to the high school where kids play hacky sack and frisbee. She was nowhere to be found. Now the sun was setting and the temps were dropping. Where could she be? By this time the animal control officer had checked in to inform me that she had not spotted our runaway either. She braced me for the fact that if she was hit by a car, it would be the Streets and Parks department that would be calling me. At this point I am picturing a shovel and dump truck.

I felt the worst was imminent. Having done everything possible, I decided to sweep the neighborhood once more. Was that a flash of brown leg in my peripheral vision? Better go check. Across the street and two houses down I found my beasty. She was shaking and scared, buy why? It was then I noticed the back door to my neighbor’s house ajar. She has a lever door handle and a dog of her own that Maddy is friendly with. Speculation leads us to the conclusion that Maddy opened the door, let herself in, hung out with her pal Denton, and couldn’t figure out how to get out of the house (I never said she was the sharpest tool in the shed). I’m sure she heard me calling and was doing her best to get to me. Other than a loss of heat in my neighbor’s house, no harm was done. Home safe and sound, now it’s easy to joke about Maddy’s growing rap sheet which now includes breaking and entering, trespassing and hit and run (but that’s a story for another time). Needless to say, fixing the fence is a top priority, in the meantime I’ve turned up the heat in the entryway where the tiles get toasty warm and Maddy likes to curl up almost as much as in the sun.