The Worst Morning in a Long Time

See this dog? This is Maggie! Maggie is a very naughty dog.

We are watching Maggie, Jim and Andy’s dog. She is a sweet-but-stubborn little terrier mix. She has seemed pretty happy with us this week…when we are outside she has alternated between sleeping on top of the picnic table and scrabbling around the woodpile on a great hunt for chipmunks.

After our walk this morning I left her sitting on the porch while I came inside. After cooling off for about 15 minutes I started dressing for work. Then I wanted to get all the dogs inside so I collected the Cocker Spaniels and started looking for Maggie. And looking some more.

You know how when you get scared and you start getting that hollow, acid feeling in your stomach and your ears start ringing? After a few minutes I had looked everywhere in the house and yard that Maggie could have been hiding and there was NO Maggie. She was gone.

I was in a complete panic. Losing a friend’s dog is in a way worse than losing your own.

I spent two hours racing around the neighborhood – in the car and on foot. I stopped and asked everyone working in their yard or walking their dog and described Maggie and asked them to keep an eye out.

I drove to Sudbrook Park and left the car there and walked back toward our house through the woods, figuring that was the most likely place she would be exploring. While tromping through the weeds, poison-ivy, and tick infested grass I came upon a very muddy area where I lost both my tennis shoes. No kidding, I LOST MY SHOES in mud up to my ankle, and I could NOT get the shoes out of the mud. In my muddy socks I slogged the rest of the way home.

Our house-cleaners were at the house, so I told them what was going on. I changed into some clean shorts and got my new tennis shoes out and went back out to walk back to the car on the road. All this time I was calling and calling, “Maggie! Maggie come!”

I was circling the neighborhood AGAIN when I passed by my house, and saw my neighbor in my yard. I whipped the car around and asked her if she had seen the dog…and praise the Lord, the answer was, “We just left her at your house! We found her rolling around in the woods behind our house.”

So I went home and beat Maggie for a few minutes. Okay, I didn’t, but I was so relieved to see her and so mad that I had been so scared that I had the impulse! I called Jim/Andy to tell them that she was back safely and then left Thomas a message. Then I had to find some non-muddy, non-shorts pants to wear to work. I talked to the neighbors for a few minutes, thanking them PROFUSELY for bringing the wayward canine home.

At work I was a wreck. I had run on panic and adrenalin the whole time the Tiny Terror was missing, and when she was home safely I could feel the tiredness flooding through my body. I am sure that those little Mothers who life cars off their children feel the same thing later when the emergency is over. I felt like I had been rode hard and put up wet and it is not a happy feeling. But having Maggie back safely and not having to tell my friends that I let something terrible happen to their dog…that was a verrrrry happy feeling.