Bad Dog (What Once Was Lost Has Now Been Found)

Bad Dog, originally uploaded by Stephanie A. Richer.

This morning, my 8-year-old Standard Schnauzer, Dante, went missing for several hours. I was very worried - it is raining today and Dante simply does not go far, preferring to get his business done and then stretch out on the family room couch.

I drove several miles around my property. I kept looking at the side of the road for a gray pile of fur, dead or injured. I sloshed through the mud of my woodlot, calling his name and accompanied by my older pup, Sam, hoping Dante might have run off in chase of a rabbit.

I called my best friend. The Dude said she would get on the horn immediately to St. Francis of Assisi, to pray for Dante' safe return. She knows how much this dog means to me. If I lost him now, some current circumstances going on in my life would make it such that it would be a very painful coincidence of loss.

Not a minute after we hung up, my cellphone rang. It was a neighbor . . . and she found Dante in her backyard, lying and shivering in the rain next to the empty lead for her dog. She owns a little female mutt - Skittles - who happened today to be at a friend's house. Dante must have jumped down into the yard to visit and got upset by the lack of his little girlfriend. She called him into her house (thank you, my dear, for taking ina wet dog) and called me.

The retrobate was very, very happy to see me when I showed up at my neighbor's house. And very, very sorry for what he had done. Look at that face - can't you tell?

No matter - I cannot blame him since even with the best of training, a dog will sometimes act upon instinct. It might be that Dante can no longer jump the fence at Skittles' home, as he used to do - I have noticed him starting to slow down as he is in his "senior" years.

My dog has his faults. As do people. I try to "cope" with them - no, not "accept" them, because if people do something wrong, you should not simply say, "Oh, that's okay," because it isn't. But you can learn to handle their faults and, more importantly, learn to forgive.

Lent is coming, y'all.

Update:  my husband ordered a special tag for him - it sends a text to your phone when the dog goes beyond a certain raidus and acts as a tracking device as well..  Our property is too large to put an electronic fence around it, so this will have to do.