Kellie had let Jazz & Midnight (ya know, the "good dog") out into the backyard for a little bit of the old lunchtime constitutional and had come back a few minutes later and discovered the gate was open....and both dogs were out.
Kellie then proceeds to run screaming through the house, yelling to her brother that the dogs were out and to come help her find them. They both run out front and discover that Midnight--remember, he's the good dog--was pretty much hanging around out front, greeting the occasional passerby and pretty much waiting for some of the neighborhood females to wander by. He came back into the house as soon as he was called. Kellie and Andy both then took off looking for Jazz--in the same direction.
Kellie then advised her brother that, ya know, things might get done a lot faster if we try looking in DIFFERENT directions. So Andy takes off the opposite way and the search is on. While this is going on, Kellie calls her Mom to tell her what happened.
Kim tells me that when she picked up the phone at work, she heard....
"Mom, the dogs got out and wwwwwwwwhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....."
The rest of the call was pretty much Kellie crying hysterically. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure she was very upset and rightfully so. But Kim is standing there trying to grasp what in the hell is going on and only managed (barely) to understand that something had happened and the dogs were out. So Kim runs out of her job and tells them there is an emergency at home and she is leaving.
She calls me at work and tells me what she thinks has happened and I also make plans on the fly to leave work and help with the search for the now missing Jazz. (Apparently Beezer was inside sleeping on the couch the entire time--he only responds to TRUE emergencies) So now, I'm heading home, Kim is heading home...and the two kids are scouring the neighborhood looking for the missing dog.
The culprits....laying in the grass....waiting to cause consternation:
So as Kellie is walking around, a guy pulls up in a car and asks her if she is looking for a dog. She breathlessly tells her that is. He tells her that he saw a black dog earlier.
She says she is looking for a white dog. He says that he will be on the lookout and drives away.
Meanwhile, Andy is searching just north of our house and sees an employee of our animal hospital (which is less than a block away) who advises him that Jazz, our little runaway (little Bon Jovi quote for your morning coffee) is at the animal hospital.
Andy goes over there, sees the little piece of (cough, cough) and takes her home.
Kellie calls Kim, who calls me....and the crisis has been averted.
Apparently someone saw Jazz wondering around in one of the parking lots across from our house and figured that she might have been from the animal hospital and took her back over there. Jazz, like a lot of the young girls these days, has her own tattoo (I think it says "Lynrd Skynrd") and it shows the vet where she belongs. So all the dogs are back home and the meltdown has subsided. We went out to dinner last night and talked about it with the kids. Kellie was sure that she would be yelled out for being the one that had let the dogs out, but it wasn't her that left the gate open so there was really nothing that was anyone's fault. I told them that I was proud of the way that both of them had handled themselves during our family crisis. Kim mentioned that Andy, who is totally non-emotional about ANYTHING (having mainly to do with his Asperger's) was crying when he told her about Jazz being gone.
And then I asked Kellie a question that had been bothering me the whole rest of the day. I wondered if, in the midst of the situation, at the height of all the drama, when she was at her most emotionally distraught....what she would have done, in her uppermost concern for the missing dog......if the guy in the car had told her to get in and he would help her look for the dog.
Without missing a beat she shook her head and said no.
And I was glad. I was glad that she knew, as I told her right afterwards, that no matter how much I love the dogs, even Midnight.....that no dog is worth finding if it means something had happened to her.
Sometimes those kids are listening when you talk to them afterall.
Later,
Jeff
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