Lost Dog

What a crazy experience! I got home from work last night and decided that I would run on the treadmill - Ray had stayed home sick yesterday and was still feeling a bit under the weather. He told me that if I exercised he would make us a yummy fat-free meal. He made a wonderful salad with fresh spinach, carrots, red cabbage, green onions and grilled chicken. He also cooked each of us an artichoke. What a yummy dinner. After cleaning up the dishes I decided to go downstairs to do an exercise routine that I had found on the Internet. Ray put Oliver in the backyard because the weather has been extremely warm for February. I came upstairs and asked Ray where Oliver was - he said in the backyard. When we went to the backyard to find him he was gone! We both ran around the yard and out to the front of the house calling his name but we didn't find him.

My heart was starting to race and I was getting worried - where did that little stinker go? We walked up and down our street calling his name. A neighbor said that she saw a little dog all by himself about three blocks down on 1300 West (a very busy street) - we rushed home and got in the car and drove down to the area that they had told us about - but we didn't find Oliver. We drove around the neighborhood and looked and called for Oliver but we again didn't find him.

I remembered that we had put a tag on him with our phone number so we went home to see if there had been any calls or messages. There weren't any. So Ray got a flashlight and I once again took the car and canvassed the whole neighborhood. Our neighbors had been at a Cub Scout meeting and when they found out that Oliver was missing they too joined in the search. After about 3 hours with no luck we called off the search and headed home.

I was heartsick - how could this have happened? I cried and cried as I thought of this poor little dog out on his own. We live between two very busy streets and I was so worried that he had found his way to one of those streets. At this point in time there was nothing to do but say a little prayer and hope for the best.

Needless to say I had a pretty restless night - I was very worried and felt sick to my stomach.

At 4:00 AM I woke up to some scratching noises on our front door. I jumped out of bed and rushed to the door. When I opened it there stood our little Oliver - safe and sound! This is nothing short of a miracle. This little dog has only been with us for a few weeks and he has spent most of that time inside the house. He doesn't know our neighborhood and he has a little bit of a small dog syndrome which makes him think that he can take on some really big dogs (and we have some really big dogs in our neighborhood). How that little dog found his way home I will never know. But I do know that he had help - which once again affirms that Prayers are answered!