~Lost and Found~

Today we lost Marley, our dog. Thursdays are our normal swim day up at Grandma Darinda's, Hunter fed Marley before we left but didn't keep him in his kennel. You see Marley has gotten wise that whenever the door to the kennel opens he's out of there :) And the funny thing is is that we can't get him to go back in for the life of us. Food doesn't even work anymore, which is shocking because Marley eats everything and anything :) Well, Hunter decided just to leave him out in our backyard, not realizing that the gate to our backyard was left unlocked. So the kids and I went and spent the day swimming and having fun, not realizing that our dog was gone. Even when we got home we didn't know that he was missing. It wasn't until later that night, when Hunter went out to play on the swing set that he came in and said, "Mom, Marley is not in his kennel" So I went out and called for Marley- nothing. So I asked Hunter if he didn't leave Marley in his kennel when he fed him that morning. He told me that he left Marley in the kennel, but after thinking about it for a minute he said, "Wait he wouldn't go back in his kennel this morning so I left him out" So we looked under the deck (Marley sometimes shimmies under there for shade), and looked everywhere in our backyard that I could think of. Then I walked over to the gate and noticed that if you just pushed on it it opened right up. I immediately knew that Marley was gone. The kids got all of their friends and went out looking for our dog. We looked everywhere! I drove all over, no sign of Marley. He was gone. Now, I would have thought that I'd have been kind of relieved not to have to worry about Marley anymore. After all I'm the one who feeds him, I'm the one who cleans up his kennel. He has dug up all my flowers in the backyard, eaten the tree I got for mother's day, eaten the swing set, ripped siding off of our house, eaten off the tops of a bunch of sprinklers, etc. so you'd have thought I would have been kind of glad, but I wasn't. I was really upset which shocked me. I never thought I'd feel that way. That night I couldn't sleep, I just kept wondering where Marley could be, where was he sleeping, did he have any food or water? I hoped that someone was taking care of him. That next morning Dave called the pound and they said they'd check to see if he'd been picked up that night. To our relief they called back saying they had him. Hallelujah!!!! Marley had been found!!!

So this experience taught our family a lot of things. Hunter learned that he needed to check the gate if Marley was going to be left out, we all learned that Marley needs more attention, we learned how important it was to make sure Marley's collar was on him(he wasn't wearing one), and I learned that I really do love this dog :)