While my American readers were enjoying Thanksgiving feasts last Thursday night, I was having conniptions (and doing a great job of not showing it, I might add). I lost Allie McBeagle! And it was all my fault.
Any hound owner knows not to leave their beagle, foxhound, walker hound, bloodhound, basset hound, whatever-else-sort-of hound or partial hound, unattended in the great outdoors. Beagles have been described as a “nose on legs,” and that pretty much describes my Allie. She’s motivated by food and scents. We live on a double lot and don’t have a fenced yard. Well, we do have a fence, but it’s one of those post-and-board thingies like they put up back in the Sixties (when our house was built) when dogs ran free and you were lucky to have even a decorative fence. We’ve lived in this house 19 years and we have considered replacing the fence. But then we’re also considering selling this house and building on the empty lot within the next several years, and then we’d just have to build another fence. Too lazy to do it twice (not to mention the expense).
So…I took Allie grocery shopping. When we returned, no males were home. Usually, the dog is in the house with me while my guys bring in the goodies. Not this time. Allie was wandering the yard while I did it. And then…I thought I called her in. I remember her actually being in the kitchen. Was it her doppelganger? It must have been, because I closed the door and went about my business confident that all was well and good.
About 30-40 minutes later, I realized that the house was too quiet. No pattering of little dog claws. My first thought was that Allie had had an epileptic seizure (as she does a couple of times a year), so I scoured the house for her. No luck. It was already getting dark by this time, so I scoured the yard, then phoned My Liege while I set off through the neighborhood to look for my dog.
My Liege came home and did The Whistle (that I can’t do) from the deck. No luck. He went on the roof and did The Whistle several more times. Still no luck. It was dark by now, and we both started driving and/or walking the neighborhood. I called the SPCA and a local radio station. Every 30 minutes to an hour I’d return to the house to 
see if someone had called. No luck.
What really scared me was that she didn’t respond to The Whistle. She always responds to The Whistle. She’s eight years old now and will come if she hears it. Not like when she was one or so and ran away while I was walking her in the orchard. She saw a deer (dead of winter) and took off after it high into the hills and into the provincial park. I thought that was it, I’d never see her again (courtesy of hungry coyotes or cougars). About 6 hours later, the orchard caretaker found her and returned her to me.
Another time, she was found two roads away. The person who found her called the SPCA with her dog tag number, they gave the person my phone number, and the person phoned me. At that point I realized not all people would know to call the SPCA, so I got Allie a tag with her name, phone number, address, province and even country! I mean, you just never know. That tag has saved her twice now, and it saved her Thanksgiving night. After more than 2 hours of looking, I came home to find a phone message. She was the next neighborhood over, far enough away that she couldn’t hear The Whistle, but traveling a route that she and I travel frequently on our walks.
It was only after we got her home that I broke down in tears. Of relief. I already have one dog’s demise on my conscience (Blackie, from my childhood, who my dad had to put down after he bit my BFF, formerly known as Sandorf Verster, sometimes now referred to as Claudia Zenk). Another dog, a stray that we took in when I was a kid, Rufus, was hit on the highway above the subdivision where I lived. That wasn’t my fault. But for some reason it still felt like my fault. And I won’t get into what happened to Kai, a pooch my friends gave me for my birthday to help me get over Rufus. The point is, I had doggie-owner guilt, even though My Liege told me over and over it was no one’s fault.
If those very nice people (who were going to a hockey game, so we gave them $20 to buy snacks) hadn’t phoned when they found Allie in their front yard, would she have come home for the night? She never has before. We always have to find her. I like to think she’d come home once she became hungry and cold enough. But there’s always the fear the dog is lying in a ditch somewhere. And then, while looking for her, I thought of all those poor people who turn their backs on their child for a handful of minutes and in that time the child is kidnapped. If I felt horrible about my dog, how horrible must those poor people feel? That thought helped put my experience into perspective.
Last Thursday wasn’t Thanksgiving in Canada, but I ended the night very thankful all the same.
Have you ever lost your dog? Did it come back on its own?