I lost my dog again this morning. This is the second morning in a row that I lost her. You’d think once would have been enough—“fool me once, shame on you” and all that. Apparently not. And I dare say, twice is likely not going to suffice either. But while I fear I am the most irresponsible dog parent ever to walk on two legs (I just.Don’t. Learn.), I wonder whether my invincible optimism isn’t, in fact, doomed hopefulness.
I wonder, and yet I’m not convinced.

Here’s how it all went down …

I’ve been in the recent habit of taking our two dogs to school with us when I drive my daughter in each morning. I find that this is the only way I can actually manage to squeeze in some morning walking/outdoor time for them before I get back home and get all overborne with work and other brain-scrambling fodder.

At first, I had discovered this amazing swath of hewn-down, weedy, tree-fallen area beside the school property that stretches back behind the school, about the length of three football fields end to end. This seemed like the perfect place to let the dogs run off-leash and chase each other and be dogs without running into the street. Which it was. Until the time when they ran past me and ran into the street.

So the next time I took them back there, I vowed not to let that happen again. This time, I walked nearly all the way back with them, deep into the deforested area, before letting them off-leash. Which was great. They ran and played and explored. And then, the she-demon returned to me, after much ado and my screaming her name, covered in muddy dross and smelling like animal innards, which is likely what she had just rolled in. Needless to say, it was a long drive home.

Having suffered the disappointment of finding and immediately losing the perfect solution, I was not to be deterred. I realized there was almost an acre of perfectly good, wood-chip-covered playground, completely fenced in, on the other side of the school grounds. So I maximized our morning time by losing them within the confines of the gate to chase each other and romp unfettered by my quotidian human concerns about them running into the street or rolling in dead things. This was the perfect solution. I was elated. I silently high-fived myself, repeatedly. It was grand.

Until …

The she-demon found the chink in the fence’s armor—a soft underbelly in the fence line she could shimmy through to liberate herself in the forested netherworld that leads into oblivion. Once she sensed her freedom, “she took off like a bat outta hell” (as my dad was known to say), and all I saw was her long, white tail bobbing away into the distance, mocking me as it disappeared.

I whistled. I called her name. I whistled again. And again. I called her name again. First lovingly. Then angrily. Then less angrily but sternly. Then lovingly but still sternly. Nothing. And then more nothing.

From time to time, I thought I heard the clinkity-clink of the tags on her collar, but when I tried to listen more carefully, it was gone. I whistled and whistled again. The birds provoked me as they repeated my same whistle, so I cursed them (silently, of course, because I was still whistling). There I stood—looking and calling and whistling—for what felt like years. Just twelve life-minutes had elapsed.

Then it registered. I was completely stuck. I had no idea what to do. She was gone. Lost in the wooded no-man’s-land between the school fence and the backyards of half a dozen houses up the street. And there was no way for me to get back there to find her without a machete and a pair of hip waders.

Strange thoughts ran through my head. Would it be wrong to just go home? I mean, there was nothing more I could do. If I tried to go in there to find her, I’d certainly get hurt. And she clearly wasn’t coming back out. So wouldn’t somebody just find her and call me? I mean, my phone number was right there on the tag on her collar. But what if her collar came off? And what if she made her way to the street and got hit by a car?

I resolved to disengage from that unhelpful, catastrophic thinking …

But what if she came back to the playground, and I wasn’t there, but there were kids on the playground, and the teachers saw that I had left her behind like that? Oh, the stigma of that was too much to even consider! But, it wasn’t like losing my child, for chrissakes. A child, of course you’d go into the woods to look for. But then again, a child better goddamned well come back when you called her or there’d be hell to pay afterward. Dogs are so not worried about that post facto contrivance.

Then I recalled the time when my entire family and extended family had come to town to celebrate the birth of my child. My house was full of relatives. My dad and my stepmom were the last to fly in. And because I was at home with a newborn, hosting the entirety of my extended family, I dispatched my also-visiting middle sister to the airport to retrieve them. So she drove to the airport (mind you, this was before everyone and her stepmother carried a handheld geopositioning device) and waited for them at the curb. When she was shooed off the curb by the curb cop, she circled around and looked for them again. Shooed away a second time, she circled a second time, and returned to not find them again. After a third circle and a third defeat, she decided to cut her losses and just return to the family gathering.

When she walked back in the house alone, I asked her, “Where’s Dad and Lis?”

She replied flatly, “Well, I looked for them and circled a couple times. But I didn’t see them. So I came back.” And this seemed like a completely reasonable response to her in that moment. I was flabbergasted. I still shake my head amusedly when I recall it. It will forever live in family infamy as possibly the most completely unacceptable defeat-response ever ever ever.

So clearly, I couldn’t just leave my dog there. But what could I possibly do in the alternative?

After several deep, heaving sighs, I collected myself and returned to the car. I exited the school parking lot and drove halfway up the block, where I parked my car and proceeded on foot, whistling and calling her name, listening for the chinkity-chink of her tags. Still nothing but my silent screams.

I turned the corner on the block where the woods met the street. I walked and whistled and called and listened. More deafening silence. When I heard the faint sound of the tags in the distance, I stood absolutely still. Sure enough, within a few seconds, I saw the bouncy-bounce of the white head-and-tail combo, running toward the barbed-wire fence that separated the wooded area from the street. The apparition stopped at the fence line, unsure how to get to me. I, on the other side of the fenceline, was correspondingly unconvinced I would reach her before she disappeared again. Thankfully (as if sent directly from the Big Dog Trainer in the Sky), I found a break in the barbed wire, and I called her over to a safe spot to jump over the fence without impaling herself. When she was safely back on my side of the fence, I resolutely clipped her leash back to her collar, scolding her under my breath while at once thanking Übertrainer for returning her safely to me.

Then I vowed never to let that happen again.

Which, of course, it did.

This morning.

Because I can’t keep a promise, apparently. Only this time, I decided I would take better precautions. I walked into the enclosure with both dogs on leads and didn’t release the naughty one until I had walked with her waaay up near the soft underbelly area so I could keep a better eye on her. And as I better-eyed her shimmying under the fence again, I kicked my own self in the ass for being such an idiot. I watched her little white tail bob out of sight again, cursing her and myself. And then I called her name, and I whistled, and I grunted her name, and I whistled. And I stomped my feet, and I started walking back to the car, and wouldn’t you believe that she came running back to the car on the far side of the fence and met me there, all happy as you please?

I shook my head at her and at myself. And at my good fortune and my stupidity and my faith that only good things ever will happen. But I didn’t leave my dad at the airport, and I didn’t leave my dog wandering in the woods behind the school. In these truths, I can still take solace.

Published March 5, 2013 in Elephant Journal.