Dog Day Adventure
Last Wednesday, my dog Grace (2 year old German Shepard Lab) went missing. This isn’t the first time this has happened. She gets out quite often, runs around and returns the next morning. Not any different from most cats, she has a natural sense of direction. In fact, it had become so routine that last Wednesday, no one was really too concerned. Come Thursday evening, panic sank in as she hadn’t returned yet. We sent the necessary calls to local police, vet offices, pounds etc, etc. She had her tags on her collar, so we figured that if someone found her, they would know where to take her. After no luck, we proceeded to dig around some more, placed reward signs at the usual busy sites but still nothing was coming around. We figured it was a lost cause as it had been about a week and now and if she was coming back home at all, she would have by then.
This afternoon, while having lunch with Allison in the commons at school, I received a phone call from my ecstatic mother telling me “We found her!” and after breaking through her long-winded nearly incoherent rant, I figured I should head home and see about this. I got home and I was greeted by Grace wearing a funnel type contraption around her neck. I got the detailed story after this.
On that Wednesday night that she got out, a man had picked her up in a red pickup truck and for whatever reason decided to let her go and left them behind a local pizza joint where an older waitress whom worked there saw this occur as she was in the front parking lot. She didn’t catch the plates or anything because she didn’t think much of it at first until she realized my dog was still outside the back area of the pizza place and hadn’t caused much of a ruckus, not because she was shy or anything but because she was in pain and laid down on the cold wet pavement. She took Grace to her daughter’s house which coincidently was only a couple blocks away on the other side of my house and it was there they realized she had a deep gash on her thigh. However, her collar was no longer intact which also meant no identification.
The next morning, She took her to a local vet and he treated her for the wound, which they couldn’t determine if she had been stabbed or if she self inflicted the wound in some manner. According to the lady, she placed information regarding the discovery of Grace in various locations including other vet offices, local grocery stores etc, etc. My mother had persisted in calling every vet office and pound within a 40 mile radius asking if anyone had seen our dog and gave a through description and we even e-mailed photos to these places but nothing had happened.
This morning, on a whim, a very paranoid friend of my mother happened to be taking her cat to the vet because the cat appeared ill and while she was there, she noticed one of those photos of my dog that the old lady had put up onto their bulletin board. She immediately called the number on the identification sheet and after a quick description, she knew it was our dog. My mother was called and she left work right away to go to the house and that’s where she found Grace laying on their couch comfortably despite the hindrance of the funnel device.
So let’s rewind, the vet’s office had treated and released a dog that was a virtual match for a dog that was reported missing and was called about repeatedly throughout the week and to boot had the location whereabouts of the dog posted right in their main hall. The old lady that took Grace to the vet even told them that it wasn’t her dog but they never put two and two together. Granted, dogs get reported missing constantly and they probably get about 30-45 of these calls per day, so I can understand letting it slip the first time but not for a whole week.
My mother paid the old woman for the vet bills, dog food and a reward and Grace finally got to come home. I’ll be honest, I’m not attached significantly to this dog. I have my own personal dog (Gibson) that I care for and is in my ownership but they are best friends, so it was more rewarding to see my dog get his best friend back because I know he wasn’t happy alone.
We’re still not quite sure exactly what was the circumstances of the man in the red truck and the mysterious wound but quite frankly, it doesn’t matter right now. She’s home, she’ll be healthy after a couple more weeks of rest and she probably learned not to leave the house again.
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