A Traumatic Day ...

On Wednesdays I spend my time at the church building cooking. We offer a full home cooked meal on Wednesday nights and I volunteer my time as one of the full time cooks. Yesterday was possibly going to be my last day so I set out to enjoy it! We usually break for the summer and then resume in the fall. Since I will be a little pregnant come the fall, I'm not sure I will be able to continue. I arrived at the building around 10 am to help make the cinnamon rolls and homemade dinner rolls. I wasn't even at the church for an hour when Jeff calls me. He says to me, "I need to tell you something. Solomon was stolen." I immediately took my apron off and rushed home. Jeff called in and took the day off so we could see what we could do. So here is how the story goes.

The day before we had a plumber out to fix our leaky shower. Later that night, the same plumber arrived at our next door neighbors house because she was having a leak. It was past 10:30 at night and our dogs were barking, so Jeff locked them inside. The next morning when I was fixing my breakfast, I noticed the dogs were still locked in, so I let them out and went on my merry way. What Jeff discovered before he left for work was that our back gate was standing wide open and Solomon was gone. For some reason, Molly remained in the yard (which is strange, she's usually the trouble maker). Jeff canvased the neighborhood while I started talking to neighbors to see if anyone had seen anything. One of our neighbors said her dogs were growling around the same time Solomon was gone. I was a MESS! I just don't understand how someone can come and steal someones dog. I printed up a "Missing Dog" poster and headed to kinkos for copies with his photo to be made. The woman at Kinkos gave us a dozen copies and then said she'd have a dozen more laminated in about an hour. So, we headed out to our neighborhood and started posting our signs. We ended up at the street next to us with our last sign. I was so drained by this point that Jeff set out to do it alone. When he finished, he started walking down the street. I rolled the window down to see if I could hear what was happening. He was gone for several minutes and then all of a sudden I see him running down the street with Solomon in his arms. Jeff had heard him whining and found him in someones backyard.

We quickly headed home and called one of our police friends. Jeff found the owners phone number and called her so that she could explain how she had our basset hound. Turns out, she is a very nice woman. She explained that this morning, her son and her were heading out when all of a sudden a basset hound jumped in her sons car. Since he didn't have a tag on and they were running late, they put him in their yard for safe keeping. Sometime during the night someone came in our backyard probably looking for lawn equipment and left our gate home. Our hounds nose took him a street away where he found a woman that watched him for us. After 2 and a half hours of pure panic from me, I headed back to the church with a happy ending and yet another crazy story to tell! Jeff set out in the neighborhood to take our signs down and a younger woman approached him and asked if we had found him. Jeff explained the story to her and she said she had passed the Missing Dog sign earlier and stopped and said a prayer for us. The woman at Kinkos gave us all of our copies for free and said she was glad that our dog was home.

It's strange how in one moment, Jeff and I thought the worst of people. We thought someone stole our dog rather than scavenging for lawn equipment. We encountered a woman that took our dog in, a woman that prayed for us and someone that didn't want money, just thankful that we had a good ending to our day. I know some people will not understand our love for our dogs but we love them very much and make no apologies for it. For those of you (our friends and family) that helped in the search, offered help and sympathy to a crazy pregnant lady, thank you!