Fugitives

Kya and Pepper ran away last Saturday. Nathan had his MBA classes that day so I was home alone. I discovered a hole under the fence which at first did not look large enough for them to escape out of. When I went in the backyard though, and realized they were gone, I knew I was wrong.

The problem is that our new house is quite new. The two lots on either side of us are still empty. We also back up to an expansive green belt area which basically houses deer, raccoons and coyotes. I called up some friends to come help in the search. For three hours straight I looked for those girls. Our new neighbors were very helpful as well. One got his wiener dog on a leash and was basically using it as a bloodhound. It's pretty funny in retrospect. Anyway by noon I was exhausted and rather defeated. As I came back to a totally empty house the worry and panic set in.

I imagine my thoughts were similar to those of a parent who has lost a child though maybe not EXACTLY the same. At first I was worried I would never see them again. But then that paled in comparison to the thought that maybe they'd been hit by a car or had gotten into a battle with a pack of coyotes. I tried to comfort myself with the fact that they had their collars on, which includes my phone number. Surely someone would find them and call us. But what if they didn't call? What if they realized how great those two are and just decided to keep them? Worse yet, what if whoever found them was a horrible person and was in the dog fighting circuit and had plans to forever change their friendly personalities into unrecognizable aggressive beasts?

It was too much to handle. Eventually I fell asleep on the couch but even that was not peaceful. I dreamed that I discovered them in the back yard. At which point I actually woke up, got up and looked in the yard and of course found nothing.

When Nathan got home that evening we went out and looked in the wilderness again for about an hour and a half. It was difficult for me to actually get back to the to do list that I had originally had for the day. It was helpful to have Nathan with me again. He reminded me that we were hosting Easter dinner the next day. We decided to go and get the grocery shopping done to help take our minds off of the dogs.

About 10 minutes after coming back home, I received a phone call. The man on the line asked if we were missing two dogs. Long story short, Kya and Pepper and gotten about a mile and half away from the house. Somehow they got into this guys business building which is completely fenced off. He wasn't sure how they got in there but they were safe. Once we got there and packed the dogs in the car I was so overcome with joy I actually hugged that guy. That was pretty funny because he was like an awkward old man cowboy that doesn't know what to do when people show emotion.

We were definitely blessed that we got them back at all, let alone before nightfall that day. We pretended to be mad at them but if I remember correctly they got a pretty awesome meal of raw chicken that night.