What an adventure!
The people who've been helping me with the yard work this month must have left the gate open last night, because I realized around 10:30 that I needed to give Charlie the Beagle his medicine (anti-histamines, if you can believe it!)... and Charlie was nowhere to be found.
Now, if you know anything at all about beagles, you know at this point I was in panic-mode. I just knew he'd been hit by a car or was wandering through the woods chasing a rabbit. I thought I would never see him again. In fact, it's a known characteristic of the
breed: "Beagles have a tendency to follow their own noses. They may take off on their own exploration if let off their leash in an unfenced area."
To make a case in point, most of the dogs in the local pound here right now are beagles or beagle/hound mixes. I know, because I was looking for Charlie.
Complicating my panic attack, was that I knew I had just taken Charlie's collar off for the night. Since he's got those darn allergies, he scratches and when he has the collar on, it jingles and keeps me awake. So I just knew he was far, far from home, with no identification and no way to get back.
I packed up a pajama-clad toddler and Charlie's collar and leash and fired up the van. Drove all over the neighborhood, out to the main roads, all the while with my head out the window, yelling. "Charlie! Charlie!"
No luck. I finally had to admit defeat and head back home. I put the boy back to bed, and let myself think about the unthinkable. Charlie was probably dead and it was my fault for not checking the gate behind the yard people.
I got online and put lost pet notices on the local SPCA and pound websites, and arranged to have a classified ad in the paper. Lost, neutered male beagle. Textbook tri-color markings, with a white tip of his tail and a white belly, brown head and ears, and black back. The pigment of one eye "bleeds" over into the white part. Answers to the name of Charlie Brown.
It was nearly midnight as I finished this, and suddenly there was a funny noise at the back door. "Bowwwwwwwwwww!"
There he was, covered in mud and shaking with excitement to be home! I don't know how he managed to find us again, but he did. He gulped down all the water in his bowl, twice. Then he hopped up on the bed, turned around three times, and curled up right in the middle.
I didn't even mind that he
snored.
