Lost Dog???

My husband and I are in the residential Real Estate business. However, I haven’t worked full-time since my oldest was born over 4 years ago. Now that our kids are a little older I’ve been thinking about getting back to work locally now that we live on Long Island. After much thought and discussion we’ve decided to start a new company with two colleagues of ours in the area.

This leads me to my lost dog story. I typically come home after dropping my two older kids at school, but yesterday I was running around looking at office space for our new business venture. I left my house with my daughter at 9:30am and came home about two hours later. My dog has severe anxiety issues so we have to keep her outside when nobody is home. I called her over and over again but she wasn’t coming to our back door. I didn’t give it much thought, as this has happened before, and started feeding my daughter lunch. I tried calling her again, and when she didn’t come I was really starting to worry that something happened to her. She’s an older dog so had the terrible thought that maybe she had a heart attack or some other fatal health issue. I put my little girl in for a nap and headed into the backyard with a knot in the pit of my stomach. Then I noticed that the gate had become unlatched with all the horrible wind we’ve been having! Oh no!!!! She has absolutely no sense of direction! And there are cars everywhere!

I called my mom who eagerly agreed to come over so I could go out looking for my pooch. In the meantime, I had another appointment set up to see office space close by, and then I had to get my boys from school. I headed out into the neighborhood for about an hour with no luck. I stopped mailmen, dog walkers, and people who are still (believe it or not) shoveling snow. Nobody had seen her. I went to my appointment, saw a perfect office space, then headed to the preschool. On my way there I saw an Animal Control van. Eureka! When I got to the school parking lot I looked up shelters on my phone and started making calls. “Has anyone called about a medium-sized black dog?” I asked over and over. And then, my fifth or sixth call, the woman said, “please tell me she’s a female”. Yes!!!!! It was her! A woman had just brought her in.

I was so relieved. Yes, I was worried about my dog but I also didn’t know what I was going to tell my boys. Do I tell them the truth? Do I bend the truth? How would a 3 and 4 year-old handle knowing she got out and she may or may not return? I’m just thrilled it wouldn’t be a concern much longer. I packed the kids in the car and told them that our dog had been on a great adventure and now we had to rescue her and bring her home. Thankfully it was a stressful, yet successful day.