TheBanyanTree: Warm Fuzzies

[Laura]

Last week, I noticed signs up all over the neighborhood for two dogs gone missing. 
One was a grey spaniel-y looking dog, and the other a beautiful tri-colored collie. 
After a day or two, those signs came down, and the new signs had only the collie on 
them. I hope the grey one came home, and wasn´t found on the road.
Anyway, Friday night, Larry came home from work and told me he´d almost caught 
me a new dog. This from the guy who´s always fussing about having too many 
animals. :) He told me about seeing a big, beautiful, tri-colored collie walking the 
wrong way down the middle of Man O´ War boulevard, towards his car. The dog 
looked confused, and seemed to be sniffing around hungrily. Larry stopped in the 
middle of the road (remember, he comes home at about 3:00 in the mornings), opened 
the door, and spoke to the dog, trying to entice it into the car. The dog sniffed at him, 
turned and walked away, crossing the road and disappearing into the brush on the 
other side.
As soon as he told me this, I knew it had to be that missing collie. I mean, how many 
collie dogs are there running around stray? None, not on this side of town, anyway. I 
told him about the signs, and we agreed that first thing when we got up, we´d go find 
one of those signs and call the number on it.
Next morning, we did just that. He spoke to the lady who answered the phone, and 
she was so excited to hear his story. She said the dog was 9 years old, and they´d had 
her from a puppy. The family was heartbroken that she was missing. She thanked him 
profusely, and said she and her husband were going to leave that minute to go look 
for her. Kinda gives you a warm fuzzy feeling, ya´ know?
Unfortunately, she called us back 5 or 6 hours later to let us know they had not found 
her. They had been searching for her that whole time, and finally gave up when it got 
too dark to see. So sad. She made me promise that Larry would call her, no matter 
what the time, if he saw her again. I promised, and told her we had dog treats and her 
phone number in the car, just in case.
Larry and I spent the whole weekend thinking about that dog. Everytime we went 
out, we´d drive around the neighborhood where he´d seen her, and look in the bushes 
for a flash of black and white. We never did see her.
Monday night, Larry called me from work to let me know the lady had called him 
again. Larry said she was practically hysterical, and half crying. He thought he was in 
trouble when she asked him, "Are you the one who called about our dog?" When he 
confirmed he was, she then said, "I don´t know who you are..." at which point Larry 
thought, "uh-oh!", but she continued, "but I can´t thank you enough! My husband 
went out in the middle of the night last night to look for her, and found her right 
where you said you saw her on Friday!! If you hadn´t called us, we would never have 
known where to look, and we might never have found her! Thank you SO MUCH!!"
Sorta gave us both that nice warm, fuzzy feeling inside.

-- 
Laura
wolfljsh at gmail.com
My Blog - http://wolfsinger.wordpress.com