And Now Daisy's Story

I'll set the scene:
Tuesday night. Around 6:15. Daisy is securely locked in the laundry room as The Concrete Guy (TCG) is coming over to talk patios. (TCG oddly resembles a mix of Sam Drake and Dan Conner. Roseanne's TV hubby. This is not important.) It's been raining all day, is super windy, and is cold. I let in TCG through the front door and lead him to the backyard. We talk and he exits through the fence gate, so he doesn't track mud through the house. Vance has stepped in dog poop, so we take his shoes and pants off. I take the shoes and pants directly to the laundry room upon entering from outside. Daisy runs out of the laundry room. The baby gate is open. So is the front door. Obviously didn't get closed all the way when I let TCG in and being so windy, it was standing wide open. Justin sees that Daisy has run out. Yells to tell me, so I start chasing her. Interestingly, I was wearing a Sporty! track suit, but still wasn't able to keep up with Daisy. I'm guessing it was the slide-on Adidas flip flops that were holding me back. The chase is on.

Our neighborhood is still pretty new. If you turn right out of the subdivision, it's all residential. If you turn left, it's all cornfields. Daisy turned left. Here is where she exited the 'hood.

The Hope Gun Club is where Justin and Vance met up with me. I was on foot, they were in the car. I'm not familiar with the Gun Club, but for some reason they lock up the entrance. A wandering Sheriff had pulled in to the entrance (maybe after seeing me running down the road?) and Justin parked right behind him. Think it made the Sheriff nervous to be blocked in? I'm thinking yes. He was nice enough to sit with Vance while Justin helped me chase Daisy. Side note: Vance was not wearing any pants.

Again, because Daisy headed left out of the subdivision, this is a sample of where we were looking for her. And at night. I must add, for those who do not know Daisy, she is not an outdoors man. She was abused by her previous owner and was kept in a cage all day. Everything scares her. The worst being wind. Our dog is afraid of wind. Did I mention how windy is was that night? Nothing else we could do except go home, make phone calls, and print up fliers.

The next afternoon, around 3:00 or so, a lady called to say she thought she had seen Daisy around 6:30 in the morning right by the rocks in the picture below. She had seen one of our signs at the grocery store that afternoon.

We headed back out to look and ended up finding her by the trees below.

It was hard to detach myself and tell the story without so many details. It was an awful 22 hours that she was gone. I was physically and mentally in shambles. Oh, did I mention that she didn't even have her collar on? And that highways surround those cornfields?

Words can't express how happy we are to have our puppy back. And, no, I did not take these pictures while we were looking for her. Vance and I took a trip today to snap these.