It had been 20 years since I'd had a dog. We'd always had them, growing up, but the family pet was whatever stray turned up on our doorstep. We'd take it in, feed it and love it for years and cry inconsolably when it died. Within weeks, another stray would come along and the cycle would repeat. Three dogs, all strays, in one childhood.
But it had been a long time, and it had never been a puppy, so I wasn't prepared for what happened.
When I decided several months ago that it was time for my children to have a dog, I visited the local shelter first. I was looking for something small enough for my 6-year-old to handle, something cuddly and calm, short-haired and already house-trained. On two different tries, nothing fit the bill.
The moment passed, house renovations intervened, and the canine acquisition was postponed. Then in April, a month before my 40th birthday, a friend telephoned. His colleague was a beagle breeder with a surprise litter of three; offered one of these, my friend thought of me and my kids. We were promised the male as soon as he was weaned.
With four weeks' notice, the first thing we had ready was the name. Toby. Word of our decision was passed along to the breeder so everyone could call our puppy by his new name. I bought a small kennel, a woolly sleeping pad, a chew toy and a food dish, but still I wasn't prepared. I'd forgotten how much you can love a dog.
If you don't mind the squawking and chewing and pooping, beagle puppies are just about the cutest dogs in the world. The first few days of the Toby era, I took him everywhere with me -- to the bank, to the post office, to pick up the kids at school. Grown-ups and children would crowd around; he must have been held by a hundred different people that first week, and he loved every bit of it.
The school principal walked by and asked, "Does that dog even have legs? I've never seen him walk." A girlfriend from Honduras heard his tiny yelp and said, "That's not a dog, that's a chicken." I just laughed. I was crazy about this puppy. The kids were, too, of course, but person after person remarked, "Boy, he's really your dog, isn't he?"
And on the first Wednesday in August, he disappeared.
It started with one of those times I'd simply had to stop what I was doing and lie down. Emma, now 7, kept trying to wake me up for this or that emergency, but I would mumble something and buy myself another quarter-hour's rest. One of those emergencies was the dog's whining. I wasn't awake but I told her to put Toby out. An hour later, when I got up, the backyard gate was open and Toby was gone.
Hysterical calls to friends and family brought everyone out to hunt for the tiny hound. We spoke to every neighbor we saw, knocked on doors, visited the nearby firehouse. Nothing came of it. We went to bed, exhausted and heartbroken.
Thursday morning, 9-year-old Aaron and I put up posters along all the nearby streets. "Lost Beagle Pup," the poster said, and after the phone number, "Reward." That night someone left a message saying he'd seen our puppy playing in a field the previous afternoon, but the caller left no phone number. That was it.
Although I had tried to adopt a dog months before, the springtime arrival of our puppy now seemed, in retrospect, to have been perfect timing. His cheerful puppy-ness put a haze of joy around many trying days. Then he vanished. We didn't need this loss, I told God in my tentative prayers, but I started steeling my heart for it.
On Friday morning, Aaron and I put up more posters, this time on a road through a nearby valley that Toby might have explored if he'd picked up an exciting scent. Then 12-year-old Alex and I visited the animal shelters we'd called the day before. The entire day was spent looking for Toby, but no one had found a little beagle.
And then the call came. When I returned from work Friday night, there was a message from a woman who thought she'd found him. He'd been playing too near traffic when she'd rescued him on our street, probably minutes after he'd left our yard. She'd kept him two days and was ready to take him to the pound when her mother had seen our posters -- the new ones we'd tacked up that morning. Could I meet her in front of the fire station? And no, she wouldn't accept the reward.
I've never seen as much joy in my children as I saw that night. The warm surge that floods your heart and body, the satisfaction of finding the lost, the giddy laughter -- it was wonderful.
I'd forgotten how much you risk when you love someone or something. This reminder was enough, for now. Toby's back, God's in his heaven, and all's right with the world.
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