Bits From MY World

Our Old Dog Missing

 Don’t know why my old dog gone missing is affecting me so deeply.  Why, it’s been more than two years that I thought for sure that he would be done any day.  Just a little less than two years ago I asked the veterinarian for something to relax him when it was finally necessary to walk with him that final mile, just a year ago when I thought that any morning I would wake and he would not and was afraid that I would have to make that big decision for him. After all the times that he threw his front paws up on the couch or the bed because he wanted so badly to be next to me ….and he couldn’t make it.  So, I would get up and help lift his hind end up so he could stretch out next to me, fuzzy dusty dog. And he would sigh……and I would sigh and pat his brown head.  We were both comforted then, knowing that in our old age, we had each other to be close to.  He had been my pal since his momma bore him in our laundry room.  I remember, she looked so surprised and bolted out of her whelping box to run to the other side of the room and look at him ……sort of scared she was first puppy and all. Then I lifted him to her and she licked the wetness away from him and nuzzled him to her. 

            I remember when his brothers and sisters went to live in new homes and his momma was frantically looking for them…but she still had him….. and we still had him because he was gun shy.  How does a puppy that has no experience get to be gun shy?  But, he was… and so much so that if someone set a glass of water down a little hard, he would run to the other room for fear of the sound of it.  Thunder, fireworks…….they all affected him the same way……and most often he would try to get his ninety pound body behind mine for protection from the unseen but very much heard terrors.

            I remember when I was gone to visit my new grandbaby, how he and his daddy got loose from my husband and took off during a thunderstorm.  When I got home, I made posters and started canvassing for miles around us to see if anyone had seen him.

I went to places I never would have even thought to approach before. We never did find his daddy….. but someone found Dusty  who wandered up on his porch ten miles from our house, briars and burrs matting the hair that hung over his eyes……..and they cared for him and brought him to us when they saw my sign in the local grocery store.  That was thirteen years ago. 

            Then there was one other time, he went missing for a few hours.  We found him silhouetted in the lights over the holding tanks at the water treatment plant down the road from us.  He must have been chasing something and fell into one of the tanks.  I will never forget watching my husband trying to balance himself on the catwalk while he rescued our quaking dog whose toenails were now only bloody rings from trying to save himself from drowning.  Dusty never left home again.  Matter of fact, he was so tied to home that if he was outside and could not get in to us right away, he would try to claw his way through the window screens.  I must have replaced the screen twenty times in the last few years.

            I loved that dog.  He, like his brothers and sisters, was supposed to have moved on.  But, he didn’t.  Instead, he stayed and moved into my heart.  In spite of his fears, he watched over our home and our family—his family and he could be formidable. These last few months, he had a new playmate and tried in his way to keep up with  her, chasing birds and squirrels and grinnies.  He was able to feel like a kid again catching the squeaky balls and bowl-legging after her across the yard in the sunshine.  Dusty was for the first time in his life, thanks to her, able to feel the pangs of unrequited doggie love.             

            It has been over a week that he’s been missing. Sometimes, when I go outside, I think I can hear his unmistakable yip and I hope that I see him lumbering across the meadow toward me.  All I can think of, is that he knew that there was someone else to help watch over us and he knew that he could finally decide for himself to lie down somewhere in the woods around our home and pass over the rainbow bridge to play in the eternal warmth of the sunshine beyond with his momma.                      

Dusty, my friend, I will forever miss you.