Smokey, looks like a pit mix to me

Field Notes: Little dog lost — and found
August 23, 2009
By Amy Bennett Williams

There was a terrible storm the night she disappeared — strobed slashes of lightning, window-rattling thunder, cold rain in roaring sheets. Still, we called and whistled, waiting for her to return. When she didn’t, we figured she was tucked in a dry place somewhere, sure to show up first thing in the morning.

She didn’t. We started to worry in earnest.

This was our beloved Smoke, after all, the dog adored by ducks and cats alike, the dog who grinned and wriggled with pleasure when sweet-talked, the dog who tail-surfed behind our cantering paint mare, the dog who’d submerge herself completely in the Orange River, disappearing like an otter to retrieve a tossed shell before sputtering to the surface a few seconds later.

Sleek and ginger-furred, I’d always claimed Smoke favored Florida’s venerable cattle breed, the black-mouthed cur, but her pricked up ears and bunched muscles hinted at a more complex lineage.

Actually, with her swooping ribcage and thighs a speed skater would envy, Smoke could have been a sawed-off greyhound — 40 pounds of nerve and heart.

Smoke was Nash’s Christmas puppy almost five years ago, though why he named a red dog Smoke remains a family mystery — a squirmy, licky sweetheart who, early on, took to leaping into our arms in greeting (and while this never failed to charm, it was one thing when she was a 7-pound pup; quite another once she reached full size. We got good at bracing ourselves.) We had other dogs, also much-loved, but Smoke was the alpha, the one who curled under the dinner table, rolled and tussled with Nash, slept at the foot of D.P.’s bed.

And she hadn’t come home.

We began canvassing the area, quizzing neighbors, struggling through palmetto scrub, looking for vultures, scanning road shoulders, dreading the thought of a lifeless red form.

Animal Services had no news; I filled out their paperwork, checked their lost pets Web site faithfully, became a frequent visitor to their kennels. She was, after all, microchipped, but with no dog, what good was the chip? We scoured the FOUND ads.

Weeks passed, then months. We imagined nightmare ends to Smoke’s story: she’d been hit, snakebit, lightning-struck, kidnapped by dog fighters.

Even with the daily reality of Smoke’s absence, it was hard to believe she was gone. At Christmastime, we opened an ornament box and there was the little stocking Nash had made for her. She showed up in our dreams. We looked for her in the back of pick-ups, half expecting to see her, yet as time wore on, our lives did too — the ache notwithstanding.

We acquired a few more dogs (one from the Humane Society, one dumped on our dead-end road; one left on a trailer porch after his family moved away). The horse’s tail got long again. Nash made Smoke a little grave, marked with a tied-stick cross and a white shell. The impact of our grief was sharper than any of us — all experienced with animal loss — would have imagined.

Thirteen months passed. Then last Friday, I got a call from our neighbor, Larry. There was an Animal Services van in the street and a note saying they’d impounded one of our dogs. Gulp.

But the officer was still there, Larry said — would he like me to bring his cell to her so we could talk? Of course, I said, expecting to hear that one of our pack had slipped away and needed to be bailed out.

“I have your dog, Smoke, in my truck,” officer Sharon Hausgen told me.

It didn’t even register at first, then I figured it was a computer mixup and someone else’s tag number (we do have six canines licensed in Lee County, after all) was showing up.

No, Officer Hausgen told me, it was Smoke — the little red one. She’d scanned the microchip, and though it’d taken a few calls and dead ends, eventually she found us.

Seems Smoke had been getting into people’s garbage across the river and the officer had been trying for a week to trap her.

“But she’s a smart one,” she told me. “She figured out how to get the food and get out.”

Finally, Officer Hausgen captured her and was heading to the south Fort Myers headquarters where we could retrieve Smoke later that afternoon.

Stunned, I assured her we’d be there, then she handed the phone back to neighbor Larry, who peeked into the truck and said, “Yep, I know that dog.”

Not, it turns out, because he remembered Smoke from before she vanished, but because he knows the family across the river who took her in.

In short order, I found myself on the phone with Gary Grindell, stammering my gratitude and commiserating with him about this wonderful red dog.

“We tried not to get attached to her at first,” he said. “We just called her Other Dog, which became O.D. and then that was her name.” And by then, the Grindells were attached too.

“Man, this is going to be hard,” Gary told me. “There’s something magic about that dog.”

Oh, yes.

Which was confirmed for us just hours later, when Officer Hausgen led Smoke off the truck.

My husband had positioned himself with Nash near the off-loading bay at the back of the building.

Roger told me Smoke didn’t see them at first. Then little Nash called her name. “Smokey!”

She turned, broke from Officer Hausgen’s leash-hold and ran to them, jumping into Roger’s arms, before leaping down to lick Nash’s face.

The same thing happened minutes later, when Smoke spotted me and D.P. in the lobby. Whining, grinning, tail whipping furiously, she flung herself into my arms.

Smokey was home.

Source:
http://www.news-press.com/article/20090823/COLUMNISTS19/90822008/1035/COLUMNISTS

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