I had quite a scare yesterday…
I’ve decided to somewhat break from the mold today because I feel the need to share my scary day from yesterday…
What started off as any old day, get up, get ready, make coffee, let Goldie out, drive in to work, sit at desk, start working…you get the picture, turned out to be a little crazy. Goldie, my lucky lucky dog, gets to accompany me into the office every day where she is always greeted by her other canine office companions and they run around all day. If we could only all be so lucky.
I know that she has a tendency to follow her nose and wander away if left to her own devices, so when I couldn’t find her around the office I didn’t think too much of it at first. After all, she’s always somewhere. I started asking around and got a response that someone saw her outside and assumed I had been with her and that we went somewhere. And so set in a little bit of panic.
…And it kept building as I realized that she had somehow gotten outside (and I won’t point fingers, but I still don’t understand how someone would let her out WITHOUT knowing about it…). Of course a million horrific images popped into my head at once as I ran to get my car keys to go start driving around.
“What if she ran into the woods somewhere and doesn’t know how to get back?”
“What if she gets hit by a car”
“What if someone takes her”
And worst of all “What if I have to go home tonight without Goldie?”
You know, basic ‘mama with lost dog’ panic. My heart dropped even further as I noticed that her collar was sitting on my desk (her and Charlie tend to get rough when they play, so we remove their collars in the morning).
Slowly people in the office started hearing about the story and were starting to gather and heading outside. My first instinct was the jump in my car and head left – call it mother’s intuition, but I found her ‘taking herself for a walk’ about a block down the road on the sidewalk. As soon as she saw me and my car she went crazy, as I think she had followed her nose a little too far and got turned around.
PHEW!
Well that was my first (and hopefully last) near dog loss experience. And did I mention I’ll never take Goldie’s collar off again? And yes, she is microchipped, but you never know, right?
Anyway, I’d love to hear similar stories…and how you stayed sane!!!
Well….first, DOUBLE WHEW! When you mention “mom panic”…I know exactly what you mean. I’m so glad you found Goldie.
I don’t really have an experience, but have experienced the same anxiousness. I have two beagles and you hear all kinds of horror stories about never letting your beagle off a leash. My dogs have escaped under fences a couple of times and thankfully, they have never “disappeared” from sight.
I don’t know what it is but when my dog Trudy “escapes”, she runs like the wind and one day, she got underneath a gate at tennis court where we were doing obedience training. I never thought she could squeeze under it. Anyway, she ran right for the busy road…stopped dead in her tracks…car comes across and she ran back to me.
How scary is that…I’m so glad you found Goldie. I can just imagine the fear you had. You tell Goldie to never do that again
I almost lost my dog Lucky (mix chihauhua/JackRussel Terrier). He chased a cat in our back yard and went under our neighbor’s yard but I never knew where he went, I was inside my house… so I called out for him and he never came till I heard him barking … he got stuck in the neighbor’s backyard.
I was so scared, I called the animal control because I thought he got out and ran off in the streets. He didn’t have his collar on
but he is microchipped which is good to have. so the good news is that I found him afterwards in my neighbor’s yard and I was so happy.
I had a similar experience with my chocolate lab, Tully. We adopted him last November. He decided to take himself for a walk by jumping over the fence around the back yard. My other dog came in the house and alerted me that something was wrong. Tully is usually the first dog to come back in from the yard. When I didn’t see him, I started looking for him in the alley behind our house. When I didn’t see him, I got in the car and started driving around looking for him. When I saw him, he was sitting in front of a Cintas truck with the driver holding his collar. He had walked in front of the truck on a very busy street a block from our house. Luckily, the driver is a dog lover with a lab at home and he stopped in the middle of the street. Tully jumped into the truck as if to say, “Let’s go”.
After that experience, we began walking him several times a day to give him the exercise he was showing us that he needed and he has not taken himself on a walk since.
Pat-
Yikes! Must be a lab thing;) Sounds like something my Goldie would do – take a ride in a stranger’s car just for the simple pleasure of taking a ride. Happy to hear that Tully was found safely!