Update and little story time: Lady the missing dog. Home at last.
We found her in the woods nearby after a message from a woman who lived opposite the woods. She had seen her several times but didn't know she was missing until a poster with a photograph gave her a description. At 1:30pm yesterday afternoon, she saw Lady at the entrance to the woods. She got close to her before Lady bolted.
Three hours later, my mother and I arrived at the spot, after driving and readying ourselves even though we're ill. By the fates blessing, I spoke to the woman who saw Lady on that road. She had been returning from picking her daughter up at school. With her information, my mother and I prepared to enter the woods.
And by chance and the fates, Christine pulled up in her little smart car, with a pillow, dog meat, and determination. I split off from my mother and Christine, spoke to a gentleman to give him a description and that was when I heard a shout from my mother.
Her head popped up from among the bushes, thistles, and thickets, when my mother called for her. It was a futile kind of call but the heavens and more answered when Lady's head appeared and she keened.
Though she ran away, she continued to keen, and come back toward my mother several times. I had gone around the other way, hoping to cut Lady off from heading toward the road, and this made all the difference.
We found where she had been hiding, a little natural alcove of tree roots by the stream in the woods. I couldn't reach it but every time I sang, she keened louder and louder, came closer and closer each time.
Still she couldn't close that last bit of distance to me, no matter how desperately she wished to. And she truly wished to.
By the fortune and favour of the gods, the lady who had adopted Lady, Christine, had brought dog meat with her from the house. It was with this that I managed to coax Lady to breach that final distance between us.
Had Christine not brought that meat, had the gods, the heavens, the spirits with all their blessings, not reminded her just as she left the house "don't forget that"...
I doubt Lady would have crossed that last bit of distance between where I knelt, singing the song she knows means safety and love, and the place she just couldn't bring herself to go past without additional encouragement.
I thank all the things that allowed me to catch her yesterday, Friday 23rd September 2022.
She panicked when I grabbed her collar. She tried to pull back, get away, with a yelp of fear. But I didn't let go. I dived forward and wrapped myself around her. Held her in an embrace that made my body scream in agony even as my heart wept with relief at having her in my arms again.
My mother helped me get the leads on Lady, helped me secure her and then helped keep the thickets, brambles, thistles, and branches from blocking me as I carried Lady to Christine's car at the edge of the wood where she had parked.
Christine had decided to park off the road, in the little side street to the woods, instead of walking down.
Thank all that made her think to do so.
Thank all that gave me the dexterity to clambour from the front seat of her smart car when we pulled in outside Christine's home — Lady's home — and not break an ankle or anything else in the process.
I had to slither, shove, crawl, and flop into the boot of a smart car at almost 30, with a body that isn't thin, isn't limber like it was at 20 anymore, and avoid decorating every seat and piece of the roof material in mud from my boots.
I did it and I got Lady back in my arms so I could shimmy out of the boot — apologising for likely breaking both the car and the drop-down boot as I did — before carrying her up the drive into her home.
I knelt down in the lounge with Lady in my arms, let her feet touch warm, dry, solid ground, untangled the leads from her, and let her have the chance to lay down on her soft, warm, dry, comfy bed for the first time in 5 days.
And then I lay down on the ground and held back every tear I desperately wished to shed while Lady looked at me with her inquisitive face that said "why are you lying down? What's the fuss about?"
My mother and I spent hours with Christine and her husband, speaking with Lady asleep between us. Safe at last.
