Lost Dog

It was a busy morning.  Richard and I were working on deadline when a friend dropped by for coffee.  Excited, Willie ran a few laps around us and around the dining table as Richard opened the pantry door to retrieve something to serve our guest.  Just then, the phone rang with a business call, and our next door neighbor stopped in to ask a question.  Minutes later, the UPS driver knocked on the door with a delivery and the phone rang again.

Some time after our guests departed and the dust settled – a half hour maybe? – I looked from the desk to Willie’s empty dog bed, located an arm’s reach away.  I scanned the room and asked Richard, “Where’s Willie?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and called Willie’s name.

Silence.

I stood up from the desk and called him, too.  Then I clapped my hands and made woo-woo sounds.  Then I looked up stairs – a place where Willie isn’t allowed and has rarely ever been.

Nothing.

“With everyone coming and going this morning he must have gotten out somehow,” I said, reaching for Willie’s leash.  “Maybe someone left a door ajar.”

Richard and I head outside to the backyard, clapping our hands and calling Willie’s name.  I walk south toward the stream while Richard goes north, past the garden shed, up into the pines and the stand of bamboo near the road.

Years ago, we fenced the property with eight foot welded wire mesh to keep marauding deer out of our garden.  But there are still a few gaps, a few places where skunks, raccoons, feral cats – and a small dog – can wriggle under it.  Over the past few weeks I’ve been working to secure the perimeter one section at a time, closing those gaps with boards or with chicken wire attached to the fence with zip ties.  But I haven’t quite finished the job and now I’m kicking myself.  In my mind’s eye, I see Willie chasing a squirrel right up to – and then under – the fence.  And then where?  Up onto the road?  Would he go west along the stream toward the meadow?  Or would he head east toward Saddleback Ridge?  There’s no telling where he might be by now, and I am filled with a sickening sense of dread.  Unbelievable as it seems, in the blink of an eye, our little rescue mutt has left our lives — maybe never to return.  It occurs to me that even as we call and whistle and clap our hands, at this moment Willie might no longer even be alive.

Richard and I are soon joined by four neighborhood children who fan out across the meadow, each of them calling, shouting, singing: “Willie!  Willie!  Here, boy!  Where are you, Willie?”

In a flash I rewind through the months we’ve shared, the miles we’ve walked — all the meals and trips and laughter.  I carry the memory of Willie’s small body in my hands, the textures of his coat and his paws and his snout.  It’s too soon for me to feel sadness or grief – I’m in an odd state of shock.

Willie is gone.

He’s wearing a collar with ID and he has a micro-chip under the skin between his shoulder blades.  What do I do now?  Do I post an alert on the Internet?  Get in the car and drive around?  Knock on doors and talk to neighbors?

Dejected and distracted, Richard and I walk back to the house discussing possible next steps.  And then Richard opens the pantry door and discovers Willie, his tail wagging, lying flat on the floor, enjoying the feel of the cool tile against his belly.