Shadow finds the most comfortable seat in the house.
It’s actually two stories. First, Tuesday afternoon. Amy had given Shadow a haircut and bath earlier in the day. Shadow’s long hair makes him really hot all the time, and Amy thought that was why Shadow has suddenly started spending long periods of time outside, curled up under the back deck. She said he never spent any time outside before, and she expressed concern that there might be something wrong with him because he was doing this.
So, late Tuesday afternoon, Shadow was curled up on a pile of leaves at the back of the house and he’d been there a while and it was a little bit windy and chilly outside, but he seemed to be enjoying himself.
he came inside and was trembling all over. i mean, shaking like crazy. could he be cold? no, amy said he didn’t get cold. was there something wrong with him? something really wrong? what should i do? i called amy but she didn’t answer. shadow continued to tremble and i called the vet. it was 4:30 and i was afraid they’d close soon.
the vet said to bring him in and shadow seemed overjoyed to go for a car ride. still shivering, but also excited.
during the ride the trembling started to wane. by the time we got to the vet, he seemed pretty fine. the vet examined him and did this test of his neck (he has neck problems) where the vet bent shadow’s neck really far in all directions and i was amazed at his flexibility.
shadow was fine. the more i thought about it, the more i knew he was just cold. nothing serious wrong. and i also figured that he suddenly likes to spend long periods of time outside because he never had the chance to do that before; the other dogs of amy’s were always around, there was no opportunity to just hang out by himself.
it all seemed kind of silly, but i was happy that this wasn’t a pet crisis that was a real crisis.
but then, yesterday morning – mollie really wanted to go outside. i let her out and kept checking on her every 10 minutes of so and she was snuffling around down by the dock the last time i looked, at 10:20. at 10:30 i looked out and she was gone. sometimes she wanders off a little, sniffing out things in the neighboring yards. i called her, and i called her some more. she didn’t come.
i got out the special dog whistle, the one that makes her come running, fast, whenever you blow it.
no mollie.
where was she? i started to walk down the lane, blowing the whistle and calling her. still no mollie.
kevin happened to call after about 20 minutes of this and i told him she was missing and i started to cry. where could she have gone? mollie doesn’t run off. kevin said to call him back with news.
i kept looking, calling, blowing the whistle. i asked a guy out in a yard if he’d seen her. nope. i asked some neighbors and the guy, who is kind of a paranoid person, said “is she friendly?” and i said yes and his brow furrowed and he said “that’s not good.”
did somebody steal her? there’s not a lot of traffic on the road during the week during the day; did a dognapper happen to be driving by at just the time that mollie must have run out onto the road?
she has never run way out to the road.
maybe she tried to take the walk we go on. i drove over to the spot where we cross a field and called and blew the whistle, and started to be convinced that one of those despicable dogfighting wretches had gotten her.
kevin came home and started looking, and we silently looked and looked, neither of us saying anything. we walked through the woods where we go with her sometimes and by this time i forgot to look up, i was so distraught.
i was sure we’d never see her again, plus i was certain that kevin would end up divorcing me. he wouldn’t be able to stand the fact that i’d let her out and she’d disappeared when i was supposed to be in charge of her.
everything was about at black as it could be. we decided to drive over by the U of I campus and look there, but first i said, let’s go home and make sure she’s not thee (i was sure she wouldn’t be).
as we were about to pull into the driveway, the neighbor two houses down pulled in her garage and i saw a flash of dog. the neighbor has a gray dog, but this dog LOOKED LIKE MOLLIE.
IT WAS MOLLIE! she came tearing over to us and jumped in the car, clearly rattle but overjoyed to see us.
she had been gone two hours. the neighbor, linda, came over and said she was really sorry, but she must have locked mollie in her garage when she left. she kept apologizing and at this point of course i was pretty much a complete mess an i was crying and telling her about having to put our cat to sleep on friday and i was just so happy that mollie was ok…
later, kevin said that during our search he’d been thinking that mollie must have been dog-napped by dogfighters and he’d hunt them down and kill them. at least he wasn’t thinking about divorce.
he said he wouldn’t divorce me.
but that was AFTER we found her.
i was so happy that mollie was safe and sound that i didn’t even mind it when amy lectured me about not letting her out by herself. right away i told her that mollie will never be out of my sight again, but that didn’t stop amy from telling me six or seven more times about how i need to watch her. like i said, though, i didn’t mind because i was so happy.
there’s no way i’m going to be able to do anything from now on except for utterly spoiling the animals. now that honey is gone, i’ve felt like i haven’t paid enough attention to winnie, so i give him treats and catnip a lot. this makes him very happy.
today, so far at least, everything is peaceful around here. no animal crises of any kind. i’m hoping this will continue for a very long time.
ok then,
thursday grace.