The Dogs Were Gone!!!

Dick's face was white...he was shaken to the core. Both chocolate Labs were gone. Impossible. Winchester, the big chief at 11, had never ever run off. After all, we have 12 acres and he knows the area he is restricted to roam. An obedient old guy (he's turning gray at the chops) he suffers through Remington's friskiness. Rem is the same age as little Sadie Mae; he's a year and ahalf, stays mostly in his large outdoor pen but the electric fence system gives him a much larger area to run and play.

Suddenly, both were missing from the yard. It was around 5 pm, getting dark. At least no hunters would be mistaking either one for a deer as soon as it was completely dark. Each wears a bright day-glo orange collar, and ID tags on those collars. But they were gone. No rustle of dry leaves when we were still and listening for them. No response to our calls or whistling.

Dick jumped in his truck, heading for 122 and that traffic, only half a mile from our house deep in the woods. Dogs and cats don't survive if they get to 122, Booker T. Washington Highway. We knew Winchester would be wise in the way of traffic, but not Remington. He would only know our gravel driveway, and the non-state-maintained gravel road, each only one vehicle wide.

I stayed home to wait for any phone calls. After driving around the area, Dick called me to say Remington had been located over in Redwood, and the fellow who called said another larger dog had been with him, but had gone off when he reached for Remington's collar. Friendly Rem had sat, allowing the stranger to remove the tag on his collar and call a registry number in NC which had Dick's cell phone listed as Rem's owner. Roundabout, but it worked.

By 10 pm, Rem was home in his own pen. We had no idea where Winchester was, but Dick decided he'd be smart enough to curl up in a safe place in the woods overnight, and then he'd be better able to locate him by morning's light. Neither of us slept well. It wasn't a cold night, by any means, nor was there any rain. Still, we worried, and by 5 am, Dick was up, dressed, and off in his truck. We both knew Winchester knew the sound of his master's truck, which would be helpful with cataracts dimming the older dog's eyesight.

Around 6:30, our phone here at home rang, with the call we'd hoped and prayed for. It was the fellow who had called about Remington, telling me that he'd found Winchester curled up asleep in an old doghouse he had a bit back into his woods. I thanked him wholeheartedly, and then called Dick to tell him the good news.

He'd just driven by the man's driveway, so he turned and headed back. Reunion between man and Lab!

What caused these two chocolate Labs to run off? Particularly since the younger one had a collar on that gave him a small jolt if he crossed the line? It's an old, old story. Seems the fellow in Redwood had a female dog in heat penned in his yard. Our two Labs had climbed down our ledge, swum the Blackwater River across, climbed the sloping meadow, then headed up another small slope. As the crow flies, they'd covered about three miles straight to Lorelei inside a well-fortified pen. Locked, fortunately.

They're home. They're safe, and signing on to renewed training sessions with Dick, their Alpha Dog. Recently, I'd been a bit smug about their being trained to stay on our land. HA! So much for smug~