Some years ago, when we arrived in this small country town, I felt I needed time to settle in before I went about meeting the neighbours. However, our dog had other ideas.
One morning after letting our dog, Dana (a Pomeranian) out the back yard, she snuck out of a small space and began to examine her new territory. A man three doors up the road was in his back yard cracking a whip and once she heard that she bolted. As it turns out, she ran an entire kilometre away. Of-course not knowing what exactly happened until some time later, our entire household was in an uproar.
My husband ran around in the street behind in search of her to no avail. I drove around the nearby streets. I did the door-to-door with a photo of Dana which produced no success. Images went through my head of her being hit by a car or truck from the main road on which we lived. Perhaps some complete stranger had picked her up in their car and drove off with her. Maybe I watched too much television, but in desperation, I even picked up the telephone and informed the local policeman. Why not? People get reported missing all the time to the police. I know it might sound ridiculous, but an important family member was missing and needed to be found. Was that bewilderment I could detect in his voice?
I began to walk a couple of blocks away before I was approached by a man in a red car. He pulled over to the side of the road and asked if I had lost a dog. He told me a friend of his further up the road found a small dog and had taken it in. He offered me a ride up there. Now, I’m not one to take a ride with complete strangers, but desperate times call for desperate measures. When we approached the property, I was surprised. I had driven this far earlier myself and turned around, feeling that she would never have got so far. I was completely fooled, for here she was hidden under cover in the back of the man’s truck. The wayward child looked up at me with a forlorn look upon her face. I had almost given up hope of seeing her again, that I eagerly picked her up and held her.
The moral of this story? Buy a goldfish!
Have you ever lost a family pet? Were you lucky enough to find them again? Have you experienced an unusual way of meeting your neighbours?
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Image © Debbie Johansson 2015
Our galah, Freddie, left home when I was young. He walked everywhere and we think he just decided to go walk-about one day and never returned. At least that what’s we like to think.
Hi Dimity. I like the sound of a galah going walkabout, so I hope that’s what happened too. We used to have a cat that hated being kept inside and happened to disappear one night. We soon discovered that other cats in the neighbourhood also disappeared at the same time, so we never saw our cat again. We’ve been curious about what exactly happened that night ever since.
Yes, Deb the issue of ‘closure’ is very real, even with young children. It’s a good lesson. Often times we try to shield them from the harsh realities of life, when sometimes they are better off understanding what and why things occurred to give that result. Losing pets, to an unknown entity seems harder to deal with than death sometimes. Interesting.
Thanks Dimity and I agree with what you’ve said; having closure is easier to take than the great unknown.