But the Dog Came Back the Very Next Day...

When I was 17, my mom went away for a week-end, leaving me in charge of the house while she was gone. She knew that I was going to have my friends over for a drink or twenty, but she trusted me well enough to keep it under control.

Overall I was a trustworthy teenager, but on that Sunday morning after a night of 'debauchery' with my friends, I opened the front door to find our family dog on the porch, waiting to be let in after a night of frolicking and who knows what else. Boy was he dirty! I have no idea how he got out, but I was ever so thankful that he decided to stay close to home. I only confessed this to my mom about ten years ago. I figured that I was too old to get grounded by that time.

Yesterday, Pumpkin couldn't find her favourite stuffed dog. I gave the house a pretty good once over in search of it, but it didn't turn up. I can usually find anything, so I became concerned that she dropped it somewhere in her travels, and that it was gone for good.

This morning when I opened the door to take Pumpkin to camp, we looked down at the front step, and there was her stuffed dog, waiting to come in! I don't know how it got out or how it found it's way back, but I was once again very grateful for yet another locked out dog staying close to home.

I immediately turned to the huz to recount the story of my mom's dog that I locked out all those years ago. He laughed, but there was this unspoken overtone in his demeanor that let me know that it wouldn't be funny if I had done that to his dog. Whatever. I'm not a drunk teenager anymore, so why even think about it. Right?

Later this very same day, after poking my head out the front door to grab the mail, I found myself experiencing the weirdest sensation of not being followed by my shadow dog, Lucky. It was the absence of tripping over her while I puttered around the house that alerted me to something being off. I called out her name, but she was a no-show.

'When I grabbed the mail???', I wondered, as I ran to the front door. Guess who I found on the front step when I opened the door?