Exciting afternoon yesterday. Just sitting and working, and it starts getting really windy. I hear the front gate creak open, and go out into the courtyard to latch it. An hour later or so I head back to the main house to get some more "water":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/000861/, and noticed only Morgan (the choco lab that lives here) was on the outside couch, and Senga (the black lab puppy "with the digestion issues":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/001239/ that I was dog-sitting) was nowhere to be seen. She sometimes sleeps in the house during the day, so I called her when I got into the house. Hm... no dog. Check more thoroughly, and maybe even think that her dad came and got her when I went to lunch or something. Call April: "Hey, did Vince and Tammy bring Senga's crate this time?" "No, why?" "Oh, crap. I was hoping she went back home and that's why her crate's not here and neither is she."

So, now it's panic time. Go out the back and yell, no dog. Go out front and yell, no dog. I start walking the pasture out behind the house, where the dogs like to go and run and sniff gopher holes. Morgan comes along to "help", and for a minute I get excited that she's going to lead me right to her, kicking it Lassie-style, but she's completely worthless and wants me to play frisbee with her. Walking is too damn slow, so I go back to the house and grab April's mountain bike to cover ground faster. Riding, riding, riding... no dog. I'm already figuring out just how the heck I'm going to tell V&T that I lost their dog, and mentally calculating how much a purebred lab costs.

April gets home from work, and goes driving around to scope out neighbors' houses and ask them to keep an eye out. I'm back to walking, because it's now raining for THE FIRST FUCKING TIME SINCE I MOVED HERE! Figures, right? I walked the whole pasture, and saw nothing. Then April was back, so we started walking to other houses. Of course the rain is coming down really hard now, and we're both soaked. Everyone was super-nice and sympathetic. Uttering the word "puppy" somehow causes a neurochemical reaction that stimulates the speech center of the brain and out comes "awwwwwwww".

As we walked we talked about what could have possibly happened. From the house you can't go more than 1/8 of a mile in any direction without hitting some sort of civilization, so best case was that someone had already found her and picked her up (it's the perfect story, right? Wet, shivering puppy on a dark night... what heartless bastard _wouldn't_ pick her up?). Senga's not chipped, but she did have a collar and tags. We weren't sure what was on the tags; maybe a vet name/number, so we were hoping to figure out who her vet was and call and see if anyone had called in. But, we didn't know who the vet was, so we would have to call V&T to tell them their dog was gone, which we didn't really want to do until we could look some more and maybe even find her.

Finally it started getting full dark, and we headed back to the house. Paul was home too, gamely looking in the back pasture with a flashlight. April called Vince and Tammy and told them what was going on. They sounded pretty ok, and were quick to say that we shouldn't feel bad or guilty. Yeah, right. Anyway, the number on her tags was their home number, so we headed over to their house on the west side of town (Apparently they have the last answering machine in the known universe where you can't get messages remotely ;-).

Get to their house, and there's 4 messages. #1, nope. #2, nope. #3, nope. Last one, and it's some dude who found Senga!!! I call him back, and he found her on his doorstep. His address was just across the street and down a few hundred yards from our street, so we hustled on back, and got the dog. Apparently she had come with some other dog (not Morgan) into his yard. I wouldn't have thought she would venture that far on her own, so I guess it makes sense that she fell in with a bad crowd and started wilding.

So, all's well that ends without me having to explain in detail how I lost their dog permanantly. I'm still going to put her in some sort of Hannibal Lechter-style restraints from now on. Or maybe just sit on her while I'm working. Mmmm.. doggie cushiony.