Losing Mindy

A couple of weeks ago Jenn came home from puppy agility class with Slayte and started making the dogs dinner. She asked where Mindy (our 13 year old forgotten dog) was and I didn't know but said she was fine earlier. Mindy is deaf and doesn't really like us so she's sort of just a resident at the house. It's like if you put an ad out to rent a room to somebody and some random person responds. The only difference is Mindy doesn't pay us and we have to feed her because if we didn't, it would be inhumane. Anyways, she was nowhere to be found. Jenn goes outside and I left the side gate wide open. DOH! I felt really bad and stupid. I cut the grass in the back yard and I didn't close the gate. I can't believe I did that...

The search was on, but it was almost dark out. I jumped on my bike and started biking around the neighborhood. Jenn took a walk around the block and came back and jumped in the car. We both got reports that people saw her, but we found no trace of her. Since she was half deaf, calling "Miiinnnnddddy" was probably a total waste of time, but what else can you do? I rode the bike for about an hour or two, I forget now. My ass and arms and everything were hurting and I was totally exhausted so I came back, dropped the bike off and got in our other car. Continued driving around for about another 15 minutes or so. At this time it was around 10PM and we decided to come back and print out flyers, assuming she was probably already "gone". Of course the printer won't work. We fought with it a while then gave up after getting 2 test sheets printed, figuring 2 is better than 0. We put 1 up then went to the other side of the neighborhood and put the other up. As we were walking back, I saw people standing around with some dogs. One of them was Mindy! We found her. People were holding her and were going to walk her around the neighborhood to see if she recognized her home. After we put a leash on her, she led the way home. We really don't think she was lost. We think when we got her she said "ok, you got me... the fun is over". We had reports of people seeing her on every road but ours. It's pretty clear she knew where home was and just didn't want to go back.

Yes, she just takes up space here, but I'm glad we found her. I would have felt bad if we found a pile of brown fur the next day on the road somewhere. It would have been sad.