This afternoon, I came home from work while Elsie stayed in the backyard of the townhouse for the first time. After spending my entire weekend with her, I missed her terribly, and ran downstairs as soon as I got home to see her and let her out. But as I peeked around the corner of the door, there was no Elsie…only and empty backyard with a newly dug ditch under the gate. I thought maybe she decided to stick close, but as I looked around the outside, I couldn’t find her. I started to get upset. I ran upstairs to put on some tennis shoes and began running around the neighborhood, calling her name. I kept asking everyone I met if they had seen a little yellow dog, but no one had. I didn’t want to run towards the road and look, but after exhausing the little grassy patches between the townhouses, I had little where else to look. So I started running down the bike path by the road. I crossed a road, and ran up a burm with a nearby lake. I kept calling her name but she was no where. I thought about one time in Ohio, when she got away from me and I promised, myself or God I can’t remember, that if I could find her I would never let her out of my sight again. I cried my way up the rest of the hill, and as I came to the top, I saw a little yellow tail flopping back and forth, and a muddy little face sniffing at some dirt in the woods.
The rest of the details get a little fuzzy from there. I know she was timid when she came to me…either because of fear of where she was or because she knew she had done wrong. I held her collar and took her back to the townhouse. I laid down. I called my parents. We decided to get an outside fence for her, with a rubber mat floor. I took her home where she’ll stay for the rest of the week until we get her new pen put up.
Elsie’s been the constant in my life…the rock against all the tidal changes. She’s always there, wagging her tail or going belly up for a little tummy time. I couldn’t cope with all these changing days if anything had happened to her.