Ten-Finger Exercises

Chico broke my heart

The boxer was a lovely dog all evening, all night. He wanted to be on the bed, but got down when told to. He was perfectly mannerly, and when I left the house at 9 for a quick visit to the nursing home, I put him in the back yard with the bedroom slider door open to the screen porch so he could come in. For the cat's sake, I closed the bedroom inside door, so she could have free movement.

The patient, who I hadn't met before, was dying, and she accomplised that as I waited for some family to come. I was gone just a few minutes over an hour. I thought, how timely, how convenient that I could be there, especially since the nurse was busy with another death. I would have to miss the beginning of the staff meeting at church, but it would give me time to check on the dog.

The dog was gone.

I called the Humane Society, and they gave me the number of Animal Control Officer and told me to call her, which I did. She said she had just seen him, thought he was a new dog that belonged to the family whose property he was on, and had gone on by. It didn't take her too long to find him again and bring him home. He had run over a mile and looked very happy with himself. I remembered how my old boxer liked to run fast in the morning, when I lived in the country and had a place for him to do so. I'd have to figure that out. The Animal Control Officer walked the perimeter of my yard with me and said she thought he must have climbed the chain link fence, in the one short section where we don't have wood fence.

Chico was tired and happy, and so I left him in the house to go on to my next patient, having a tiny sense that I should not be gone too long, but not much. I had an unavoidably long trip and was on my way home when Bill called for me to pick him up at the airport. So I was gone a little over three hours.

We knew something was badly wrong when we drove into the driveway. I didn't take a picture from the outside; in fact, I'd started to clean up the mess of broken glass and pots of dirt from the window sills before I thought about taking pictures. I'll download them and show you tomorrow what that boy did when he was panicked about being alone.

I prevailed with Bill not to beat him, and we put him in the back yard for just a moment to get our bearings and call the Humane Society. Oops, he was up and over the fence, and Bill saw him. Before that it was a little bit of a mystery. Bill jumped in the car and tracked him down, and we returned him to the Humane Society, but with great sadness for the dog and for us.