Found My Dogs and My Community

On Wednesday night last week, Nov 3rd, I lost my dogs. I have two dogs. They are named Emma & Bailey. Emma is the youngest; she is a yellow lab about 5 years old and has a sweet and excitable nature. Bailey, my old man, is a black lab has some grey on his chin and is the calm to Emma’s enthusiastic nature. They both love us very much and we love them too. Nancy had gotten them some more food and it was too large for her to carry in from the car so I went to get it. I emptied it into the food bin while Nancy went to fetch their dishes.

We had not been able to feed them a complete meal earlier in the day because we had ran out. As I am waiting for the dishes so I can fill them with food, I hear my wife exclaim that they are not in the yard.

I went out in my car looking for them. It was 9:30pm and pitch dark outside. The chances of seeing the dogs was slim but I couldn’t do nothing. I guess I was out for an hour when I gave up. I went to bed worrying about them. I was thinking: “What if they were hit by a car?”, “What if Bailey was hurt and Emma would not leave him?”, “What if someone found them and took them for their own?”, etc. What made matters worse was they had gotten out without their collars. Emma seems to get her collar off pretty easily. Her neck is thicker then her head. Bailey lost is tag on his so even if he had had it on, he would not have been identifiable with it. We usually keep them on.

The next morning I went out again. I woke up at 5:30a and could not get back to sleep from worry. So I searched for another 45 minutes. I finally decided I was not doing them any good by driving around. I headed home, cranked up Pages, and created a flyer. Then I sent the flyer to the UPS Store near my house to be printed 50 times and started getting ready for work. Nancy & Chelsea put up the flyers that afternoon.

I drove to the Cobb County Animal Shelter after work. I met a young man there who I thought was working there but turns out he was just a frequent visitor to the place. He helped me find the right people to talk to. They were very helpful but I did not find my dogs. Before I left he took my name and number and told me he’d keep an eye out for 2 labs matching my dogs’ description. I was struck by how willing to help a complete stranger these folks were.

Later that night, one of our friends saw the flyers we posted, and called my wife not realizing that the number on the flyer was hers. She had seen our dogs at a local Texaco station and has seen a lady who was trying to take the dogs in hand. So we went to the Texaco with our flyer and asked if we could post it. The attendant gave us permission and said he had seen our dogs too and that a lady had taken them. We hoped that she might check back in the area to see if any flyers had gone up.

Sure enough she did check back and the next day my wife got the call that our doggies were safe and sound at the Mostly Mutts Animal Rescue. The lady who had taken our dogs from the Texaco took them strait over to Mostly Mutts. So while I was out driving the streets of Kennesaw looking for my puppies, they were safe and sound in a well equipped animal rescue probably having the time of their lives getting all kinds of love and attention.

Kennesaw used to be a small town. When I moved here in 1997 it was already getting bigger. In the past 13 years it has gotten quite large. There are so many people. Sometimes it seems like no one knows anyone else. This is not true. We are connected in so many ways. We are connected by relationships and by the places and businesses we visit. Those connections led us back to our doggies and I am so glad and thankful for it.

I never want to go through losing my dogs again but I am heartened by the fact that when I did, my community helped me. I try to be the type of person that exhibits uncommon courtesy, generosity, and honesty. Either I got VERY lucky or it is not that uncommon. More the better.