The Search Party

Have you ever not been able to find your dog or cat? You're searching everywhere for them - all the rooms in the house, the yard, yelling their name down the street, etc. And then the next thing you know, there they are staring up at you like they've been behind you the whole entire time.

Yea, that was me a few months ago. I have a very large yard, about 4 acres big. There are a lot of structures on my property including my house, 5 greenhouses, a barn, an old covered area that used to be a stable, a butterfly house, and some other stuff. (My family owns a nursery.) Shiner has a lot of places to explore, which she does on a daily basis. Everything is fenced off though and she never leaves the property.

Part of the yard that I speak of. You can see 2 greenhouses and part of a tree lot in the background. Plus the "woods".

Anyways, on with the story. One night when my mom was staying over, she was outside and told me that she heard a noise and it sounded like a hurt animal. So I stopped to listen for a minute and heard the noise too. Then she declared that she thought the noise was Shiner in the woods. I was skeptical, but went to check and see if Shiner was in the house. She was not.


I proceeded to call for Shiner outside. Shiner has selective hearing a lot of the time, so it's not that unusual for her to not come when I'm calling her. But Shiner didn't come.

My mom started freaking out a bit about the noise in the woods and she probably would have bet money that it was Shiner out there, hurt and yelping. I honestly didn't think the noise really sounded like the dog, but just to be sure we set off across the yard towards the trees.

The "woods" beind the fence. You can see a house from the subdivision through them. 

The woods aren't really "woods" anymore... just some brush and trees as they were mostly cut down to build a subdivision next door. Anyways, we trudged through the waist high grass and sticker burrs using my phone as a light. The grass hadn't been mowed because it upset those killer bees when the tractor was brought out to mow it. (The bees are gone now, by the way.)

We got to to the tree line and started looking in the brush for Shiner. I didn't see her, and I didn't hear that animal noise anymore either. My mom decided that she thought the noise was coming from beyond the trees... So we squeezed through a hole in the fence and went through the brush.

On the other side is the subdivision I was talking about. There's a storm drain and another field maybe 30 feet away from the sidewalk and some houses in the neighborhood. And yes, people were out walking their dog while we came out of the brush yelling "Shiner!". It was... interesting.

Unfortunately, the storm drain had water in it and I was wearing brand new shoes that I really did not want to get wet. Especially because I really didn't think the dog was over there. My mom told me to get on her back, so I did. Yea, it was kind of a funny site. She went across the puddle and we continued our search.

No dog. So off we went back over the puddles again, me on my mom's back. Back through the bushes and trees and through the fence. I told my mom that the dog was probably in the house by now.

We walked in the door and guess what? There was Shiner doing her goofy toothy grin thing and wagging her tail. My daughter said she had tried to call my cell phone to tell me Shiner was inside, but it had died during our search party.

Hi guys! 

So the moral of the story is... well, maybe there isn't one actually. I'm sure my mother and I both looked like fools crossing that storm drain. But we had a good laugh about it at least.

Has your pet ever led you on a wild goose chase only for you to find them in the most obvious place ever?

Since this event happened in the past, I'm joining Dolly the Doxie and DOGthusiast in the #Throwback Thursday blog hop.