BACKYARD - DOG = UNPRODUCTIVE DAY

I decided to update this blog while I eat some cockroaches of the sea.

This Wednesday was crazy windy with gusts up to 50 mph. Yesterday my mom woke me up saying she had let our dog, Tucker, outside and went to check on him 20 minutes later only to discover the fence had blown over at some point and he was gone. That kind of news will get you out of bed in record time! My mom, my sister, my friend Amy, my sister's friends Mel and Tara, and myself all spent a good amount of time hunting around the neighborhood for Tucker. Finally I went and filed a lost report at the animal shelter. I had been driving down alleys and streets at 10 mph for about 4.5 hours when I got the call saying they'd brought in an animal matching my description ("stiff back legs after sitting/lying down; grey hair around the eyes"). I immediately headed over there. At that point I'd had a really horrible day, was fighting being afraid that something terrible was going to happen and I wouldn't see my dog again, and had finally decided to have real hope ("a confident expectancy") that he would be there. I was standing in line for a while at the animal shelter and eventually just headed back to see if he was on the stray aisle. Since I wasn't allowed inside, I could only look in the window from behind one of the rows. Seriously. I will never forget the image of Tucker sitting in a little stall with his back to me, his head turned slightly but his ears down and a general forlorn look about him. It was precious! I nearly cried with joy. In all the hullaballoo after that I didn't even think to ask the animal shelter worker where they had picked him up. I was so glad to God brought him home!

Tucker getting lost is not really an unusual experience for me. The only reason this time was different was because he wasn't wearing his collar. He used to escape all the time in Amarillo--any crack in the door and he was gone (Beagles are like this--you have been warned). There was a time when our house was right next to one of the busiest streets in the city and my brother chased Tucker down that alley barefoot, embedding glass into his feet. Then there was another time he escaped from the same house and wound up about 6 miles away. Horrible. I adore Beagles but they can be torturous: stubborn, ridiculously instinctive (they follow their noses and ignore anything but), and definitely loud ("beagle" is believed to come from a old French word for "loudmouth"). All this aside, Tucker is exceptionally mild-mannered (he had a rough puppyhood) and easy going, albeit sometimes antisocial. A house isn't the same without a dog in it, folks! I'm so thankful my dog is home where he belongs, sleeping on the loveseat and chewing on his pig puppet.