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Every pet owner knows what it’s like to lose their little companions. One of a pet owner’s other trials is when that little loved one disappears and you never find out what happened to it. That happened to us when our red bone hound Gypsy disappeared. It was a mystery that we feared we might not solve. Another mystery is how she came into our lives unexpectedly.

I must have missed the sign outside our house written in dog language:

A couple of suckers live here. Make yourself welcome.

This story began on the 4th of July. At 6 am it was already light outside when Scoop and I went for our morning walk. Outside our front door a dog was sleeping and only lifted her head as we passed. When we returned, she was still there. I advised MacLeod please don’t feed her. We don’t need another dog. The next day, MacLeod relented and gave her a bowl of Scoop’s food. “You don’t want her to starve to death at our front door do you?” she asked.

The dog had what looked like an ugly case of mange on her back. We took her to Ginger Macaulay who determined it wasn’t mange but aggravated flea bites. We washed her every day with medicinal soap. She was affectionate and would stand patiently while we bathed her. In a week, the bites had been healed. By now, she had wormed her way into our affections and was part of our family. Scoop and she fell in love and played like young cubs, chasing each other, rolling on the grass and sleeping together. One sad day she disappeared.

We called for her. We walked our neighborhood streets. We visited the county Animal Shelter on Ball Park Road. They graciously posted her photo on their website in case anyone had seen her. For a week we worried that she may have been hit by a car and was lying off the road, badly injured and in pain. Because she looks like a big hunting dog, we wondered if someone might have enticed her into his vehicle and taken her. If he thought he was getting a hunting dog, he was going to be disappointed. Loud noises scare her to death.

As they said in “Casey at the Bat,” there was no joy in Mudville. All of us moped about for a week and had about given up when we heard scratching at the door. It was Gypsy. We almost cried. She looked like she had gone 3 rounds with a wolf pack, but the wolves lost. We patched her up as best we could and took her to the urgent animal care center. This was a Sunday afternoon, but 2 hours and a down payment on the national debt later, she was ready to be driven home. She still bears the scars of her ordeal. We still don’t know what happened to her. But this story has a happy ending. When we go for a walk Gypsy is on one end of the leash and I’m on the other. She doesn’t want me to wander off and get lost.

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