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?
Cindy, so glad you found Allie. Our dog is a runner. She’s an English spaniel, the field type (a hunter, with shorter hair than you see on the dog shows–those are the bench type). When she’s free, she runs and won’t come in until she’s exhausted herself, which takes hours. She sticks around the house, but she goes into the street. I’m always so afraid she’ll get ran over.
Cindy!! I’m so glad you found Allie! My dog Ranger (also a beagle mix) loves to run, too. If he sees an open door, he hits it, but he’s such a chicken that he comes back within a few minutes. Especially if you shut the front door and don’t wait on the porch. He wants the great outdoors without the dangers! So very glad you have her back! Hugs to both of you 🙂
Thanks, Edie.
It’s hard for me to think now that we used to let our dogs run free in the ’60s and ’70s and usually bad things didn’t happen to them. Instead, bad things were happening to other people’s lawns. 🙂 Everyone let their dogs run free, so it wasn’t like you were considered rude if you did it (like now). But neighbourhoods are more congested now, and traffic of course is on the upswing. It’s dangerous for dogs out there, just like it is for kids. Especially car-stupid hound dogs.
Jennifer, don’t you love beagles? My dh had a beagle mix when I met him as a teenager. Her name was Shadow. She’s one of the reasons I wanted a beagle myself when it came time to get another dog. But Shadow didn’t take off! She tricked me. She was very good about sticking around. She was a stray that my dh’s brother found at a gas station in another province. Hmmm, maybe she DID run off. The gas station attendant said she didn’t belong to anyone, had been hanging around, so my dh’s brother brought her back to their parents’ house. She stuck around THEIR house!
Allie doesn’t run (unless she’s chasing a deer, which we now know to be on the lookout for). She sniffs. That’s how she gets lost. I’m sure she goes into a kind of nose-haze and doesn’t even hear us calling her or sometimes even whistling for her. When she’s deep into sniffing a trail, she’s VERY focused.
I’d love it if she were a chicken and came back!
Oh, I’m so glad those people found her!
One day my sweetie found a stray three legged golden. Since our neighbors’ kids were visiting for Christmas and they rescue Goldens, many of whom were in their back yard, and he knew they had a three legged one, he just put the dog in their gate since they weren’t home. Turned out it wasn’t theirs! What are the odds of TWO three legged Goldens in one small neighborhood? They took it to the vet who found the chip telling who their owner was. Owner was called and came and got him. (Which reminds me, anyone who doesn’t have their dog chipped, must!)
Our little mixed foo-foo rescued dogs always run straight across the street to visit their dog friends when they get out. But our rescued Dobie is still young and if she gets loose, she’ll do like Edies’ — she’ll run and run, bounding like a springbok — up and down and across the street into everyone’s yards, with us just missing her until she gets exhausted and finally comes for her cookie. If we lost her at night — like we once did Allie the Wonder Hiker springer/hound on a S.C. beach — I’d panic.
I also think hounds are scarier to lose because they might not notice a car. Allie never looked up, she was always sniffing with her hound nose. Once, out in the woods a herd of deer ran across the road right in front of her and she didn’t notice until her nose got to that spot! Then she went bonkers, lol.
Hugs to you all for your happy ending!
Thanks for the hugs, JoAnn. I’d pass them on to my Allie, but she’s bagged out on the basement couch after our morning run/walk.
That’s funny that you also have/had a part hound named Allie. Mine is Allie McBeagle, but she’s a little, um, chubby. Not like her namesake, Ally McBeal 😉
The hound nose is exactly what scare me. Because you’re right, they just don’t notice anything else when their nose is at work. That’s what makes them car-stupid, especially if they catch a scent, like you say.
We get deer sleeping at the bottom of our yard in the winter sometimes. Allie loves going bonkers from the deck. But the orchard across the road, where the deer used to come from, is now fenced to keep the deer out of the trees, so I don’t know if they’ll make their way through to our yard this winter. Plenty of pheasants still come by, though. Another way to drive Allie nuts.
Thanks for coming by!
Wow, I’m so glad you found her! What a horrible night you had!
My dog doesn’t usually roam, though my husband used to have a habit of letting her out without chaining her (because she always came right back) and then forgetting her and going where he couldn’t hear her scratching. Those times, she’d wander a little. Guess where she always wound up?
Our neighbor the cop’s house. *sigh*
LOL, Natalie. I would have felt so guilty had I not found Allie. Today, we went for a 2.5 hour walk/hike with a friend and her “nephew” dog. I had my eagle eye on Allie the entire time.