O2: Story Two - "The Runaway Dog"
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When I was in high school, we had a white wooly sheepdog mutt named Muffin. She was a very sweet dog, too big to be a lapdog but didn't care - she'd jump on you or the couch or the recliner just for the fun of it. She enjoyed the cats, got along with everybody - really, a great dog to have around.

Once, she got out of the fence. She wasn't bold enough to dig out or jump over, so either my brother or I must've left the gate open by accident. And we figure it happened early, because by the time everyone got home from school and work, she was nowhere to be found. We drove all over the neighborhood, on bikes and in my dad's big navy blue Ford LTD II, yelling for Muffin, calling "here, puppy puppy!", getting other friends and neighbors involved.

That afternoon dragged on and on. Knowing she was a skiddish dog, we were sure she'd probably wandered toward the highway and gotten hit by a car. It's one of those things you think about when you can't find your dog. We drove around the neighborhood more the next day, and my brother and I and some friends went trekking through the woods, yelling for Muffin, finding a few other worthless critters instead. We also drove along the highways by our subdivision, and my mom called the pound to check if any dogs fitting Muff's description had been rescued lately. No luck.

We got a call about a week later from a man in Memphis, TN. He had picked up a sheepdog mutt with a tag that had contact information on it, and had we lost a dog. We were floored. Evidently, Muffin had made it all the way to the interstate, then had crossed the interstate - I still don't know how she managed that, unless it was in the middle of the night or something - and had been "rescued" by a family stopping at the rest-stop there on their way home from Isle of Palms. There was no address on the collar, only a "call this # and give them this code" kind of thing. He had kids, and they of course fell in love with Muffin, too - so they decided to feed her, get her some water, and take her home before finding her owner, who could've been anyone since this was happening at a rest area in the middle of summer vacation.

It turned out that the gentleman would be travelling back through town in a couple of weeks, and he offered to bring Muffin back with him. We met at the rest area on eastbound side of the highway and got our dog back. That was cool, and we promised to send pictures back from time to time to his family, thanking them for helping Muffin. And Jeff & I made sure we did a better job of shutting and locking that blasted fence gate.
- posted by Rick @ 11:00