Seriously.
Blue got out again. And as of 5 AM this morning when this post publishes, she will have still been missing. (I would love to check my grammar on that last sentence, but between the worry and the calls from Sprite "Have you found Blue?" "Is she back? Blue is my best friend." "Mommy, when Daddy comes back, tell him we need to find Blue." and my responses "No, not yet." "No, I know she's your best friend." "Sprite, we're LOOKING." "GO TO BED!!" and the fact I just feel so dejected right now, memories of 9th grade English are not coming forth.)
I haven't mentioned that she also got out last Friday. My parents were visiting and arrived at our house while I was picking Sprite up from school. I was in the empty classroom, rushing to shove Sprite into her dance outfit before the other kids came in from the playground, when the cell rang. I glanced at the number and answered. "Hey, Dad. Are you here?"
"Yeah. Listen, Jen, we let the dogs out and now we can't find Blue."
"Shit."
"Mommy, that's a bad word."
"Crap. Um, no, sorry, Sprite." I shooed her into finishing up while I thought about what to do. "Okay, Dad, we're coming home."
No dance class for us. The dog came first. Once we had Sprite's things together, an idea came to me and I called my father back.
"Hey, Dad? Take the container of bones out and look over by Dan's house. There's a thicket of bushes that Blue likes to sniff by. We're on our way."
The phone rang two minutes later.
"Found her."
Dance class was saved.
Of course, two weeks before that, she had escaped through another hole in the fence, not the one we had already patched up from her first jailbreak, or the one she subsequently dug her way through with my parents on watch, aided this time by an armadillo who had been sneaking into our vegetable patch only to realize that we had no vegetable patch, just weeds. No, this was a brand new route. And of course, John was working late and it was just Sprite and me.
Riddle me this. Harry is the smaller dog, Blue is much bigger around. Why is Blue the one escaping while Harry waits patiently to be let in?
Anyway, I loaded Sprite and the smarter canine into the van and started our tour of the neighborhood, helped by the later setting sun. We weaved our way through streets, looking in her usual spots, checking out sources of whining or barking in other areas. John ditched his evening plans and joined the search party. As the sky grew dark, we were about to give up when John proposed one more go around. Driving slowly through, we turned down one street after another, close to our home, calling out for our lost dog.
A cruiser came past us, continuing down the block before turning around at the end of the street. Oblivious to it, I pointed John down another road.
Seconds later, the red and blues were on illuminating our van. What a picture we must have painted, a preschooler in the back seat, out clearly past her bedtime, a terrior who was crying out from the back, and me nagging John, "pull out your license! Oh my God, where did you put the registration?"
John flipped up the interior lights so the approaching officer could see everything within and explained the situation to the thankfully sympathetic County Sheriff who promised to look out for a beagle, but wanted to let us know that a concerned neighbor had called them due to our suspicious activity.
Probably the same neighbors who had seen us in the exact same van for the past three hours calling out for our pup while it was still daylight.
(Why drive to look for our dog? Well, with a four year old, walking and running are not options. Riding your bike is not an option. Keeping the kid confined, preferably with restraints, is the ONLY option. Plus, we live in a rural area, the benefit of this area being that there's a lot of thick brush everywhere making it difficult to hide a criminal who's scoping houses, the drawback of this area being that there's a lot of thick brush everywhere making it perfect to hide a vertically challenged dog who thinks her nose supersedes some stupid fence.)
As soon as the officer walked back to his car, we admitted defeat and headed home, but not even ten minutes later, John decided to give it one more try and headed out on his own with flashlight and the van.
He had her back within thirty minutes, having followed the sound of her jangling collar and the loud chat she decided to have with some neighborhood dogs a couple of streets over.
This time though? Her jangling collar was found snagged on our fence, right where she escaped, the other collar she's wearing has no ID on it. This offered no assistance as we were now looking for a silent dog who, unless she's in trouble, doesn't make much noise.
I took the bike out while John and Sprite patrolled by van, taking different streets, turning down one, then another, winding our ways through in jagged "Z" formations.
Nothing.
I stalked every dark form I spotted from yards away, pedaling as fast as I could before I identified a cat, a duck, a box. (The box wasn't black, but anything low to the ground was getting a closer look.) I followed every noise I could hear, barking dogs a hopeful smoke signal.
Nothing.
I pulled into driveways, finding the very chihuahuas Sprite's been auditioning to replace Blue, yapping like mad just because their shadows were yapping back.
Chihuahuas are definitely off the list for future pets. I don't care how many idiotic movies they make about them.
John thinks he's going to try once more tonight. I can only hope I strike through the five am update with some good news.
She's about to turn 11. She's old, she's epileptic, she has a heart murmur, she's dumber than a milk-bone, yet seems to be a master at escaping, escaping the very home that keeps her safe from a world that is less than sympathetic to the less than strong, she's got a mass growing on her right side, common for female beagles that gets larger every time I check it. She's weak overall and too nice, a perfect victim.
Every time she does this, we claim this is the last time we'll look for her.
Every time, we prod each other into just one more search.
10:30PM: We're both sitting in bed, deciding who will be the one to go to Lee County Animal Services to file the missing dog report tomorrow. We've already checked out the website, already told Sprite that we would try to find her tomorrow, put a forlorn child to bed thinking her beloved dog is not coming back. By the way, did you know "she's my best friend"?
I'm typing this post out when I hear a short little bark, a hound dog pitched bark, a Blue sounding bark.
I turn to John. "Did you hear that?"
He looks up from his laptop. "No. What?"
"It sounded like Blue!" I leap out of bed, immediately shoving my feet into flip flops while John runs about, grabbing a shirt.
I think I heard it from the rear of the house so John heads to the back door, armed with a flashlight to check the fenced in yard, maybe she decided to make good on her bad behavior and squirmed back in under the gate?
While he looks, I call for Harry who's been hiding under the bed. He walks out, interested in going outside, but hasn't displayed any alert behavior leaving me as the only one who heard the bark.
Maybe I'm wrong?
John comes back in, shaking his head. "I'll check out front."
We both walk out the open garage door, looking out onto the dark street.
"I think I heard some barking over there," he mentions, pointing toward the North. Just below his finger, I notice a dark form coming closer, as if she had been hanging out in our front yard for the past five hours all along.
"Blue!"
She walks right over to John as he leans down to ruffle her fur. I promptly burst into tears. What can I say? I love that damn dog. And we're both just in shock that, for the first time, she's come home on her own.
The kid is sleeping right through everything.
We usher her inside, declaring leash only laws on the wayward one until we can finally fix the fence problem once and for all, letting her rehydrate since she beelines for the water bowl as soon as she's inside. "Drink up, bitch," John comments as he walks back into the bedroom.
Blue is now snoring underneath our bed, right where she belongs.
And John and I can't wait until Sprite wakes up in the morning..