Lost & Found

For the past year or so, we have had one of our neighbors watch Daisy while we are gone. Not for long trips, but weekend get aways or when we are only gone for a few nights. If we do go for a long trip, she usually stays with family. Basically, the dog is spoiled & has never really stayed at a kennel. Our neighbor will be in high school next year & has 2 small indoor dogs of her own who she takes great care of. We have never had a problem with her & Daisy - until last week. I got a text message about 11:00 last Wednesday night that Daisy ran away while she was being let out to go to the restroom for the night. Apparently she got scared, snuck under our electric gate & disappeared in the dark. Immediately I woke Bryan up because I didn't know what to do. She has hardly left the little corner that we live on so I was afraid that if she got too far, she wouldn't know how to find her way home. Also, she is a diva & quite frankly I was worried she wouldn't survive being outside all night!

 

I was also concerned because we have a lot of coyotes & bob cats in our area who like to roam our neighborhood. They don't typically bother us if we don't bother them, but they do like to prey on small animals, especially dogs :( Poor Bryan got up & drove home (this is when we were at the Great Wolf Lodge) & he drove around until 2:00 in the morning looking for her. The other bad news is that our garbage day is Thursday morning, so all of the sprinklers were going off on Wednesday night & Daisy does not like water. And I kept thinking she would get run over by the dump truck since they come to our neighborhood first thing in the morning. Needless to say I didn't get much sleep that night but I kept thinking that we would hear from someone once the sun came up.

 

Unfortunately the sun came & went & we still hadn't heard anything. We had several of our neighbors out looking for her, especially all of the kids - they were so sweet! Everyone was texting & e-mailing us, checking on her. We called the animal shelter, sent out an e-mail blast to over 400 of our neighbors, & did everything we could think of. I will admit that I had almost given up home when I went to bed on Thursday night...... I was really afraid one of the animals had gotten her.

 

But then I got a call on Friday morning from a local animal hospital. Apparently a family found her on Thursday night & they brought her in the next morning. She was scared, but healthy. Unfortunately, she did not have her tags on (my bad - I am always switching her collars & sometimes those tags are annoying) but she has a micro-chip so they were able to find my name & cell phone. We came & got her that afternoon as soon as we left Great Wolf. Poor thing was so scared - when we got home she went straight upstairs & hid underneath a bed for a while. I think she had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder! Her little paws & legs were all matted & dirty, probably from all the running & hiding, so we gave her a bath & cleaned her up.

 

 

Sweet Daisy has been in our family for almost 10 years & she has quickly become Sadie's best friend. I knew that Sadie wasn't old enough to understand what happened, but I was nervous that if we didn't find her we would have a couple of days of Sadie looking, asking & wondering where Daisy was. Thank goodness she is home safe & sound now!

 

 

 Looks like we will have to start boarding her while we travel. I hate to send her away, but she really has gotten worse the older she gets & at least we will know she is safe locked up in a cage as opposed to sneaking out of the comfort of our home.