She barked as I left the house, lunch in hand, and made my way to work. She stood, like she usually does when we let her out at lunchtime, alone on the front lawn, barking at nothing, staring straight ahead, but seeing nothing.
Her name is Patch and she's fourteen years old.
She's also blind, as well as deaf.
I thought about picking her up and taking her inside, but I decided against it. After all, when she's ready, she'll find her way up the stairs and scratch at the door to be let in. Only today, she didn't go up the stairs...
And she stopped barking.
It was an hour or so later we discovered no one had brought her in. We began our search. We looked in the neighbor's yards--nothing. We looked where she has been ending up when she gets lost or confused. No sign of the fluffy puffball. Of course, calling out for her would do no good. That's when we got worried.
She's been known to wander into the next neighborhood, but the last time she did that was winter. Now, there's tall weeds blocking paths she would normally take. Because she's blind, tall weeds and other plants cause her to turn back. As I checked places a small dog might find herself, I began to think of all the possibilities of where she could be. The fact we could hear no barking caused me the most concern.
I came up with three options.
1. She could have been picked up by an animal control vehicle.
2. She could be resting in a shady area somewhere, tired from trying to find her way home.
3. Or, she could have graduated from this existence, her old and tired body having experienced too much.
Months ago, when we decided it was getting close to us having to put down our precious cat Gracie, we discussed Patch. Some days she's prancing about like a puppy. Other days, she'd sleep all day and not eat anything. It's actually a miracle she's still with us. That third option returned some of those thoughts to my mind.
A few hours later, my wife decided to drive to the neighborhood below ours. We heard someone saw a dog in a yard, but it was before lunch. We thought we ought to check there. As my wife walked between a couple of houses, she heard panting.
She knew.
Patch had been found.
She brought her home, sticker weeds throughout Patch's hair. She was exhausted. We set her before her water dish. She lay there lapping up water--it was all she could do. Patch isn't out of danger yet. She picked up a nasty cough that we hope will subside soon.
We have four animals in our house. The oldest is a farm cat that's around twelve years old. We then have a large dog that just turned one, a kitten that's a few months old, and Patch...the matriarch. It's like having a newborn, a teenager, a middle-ager, and a senior citizen, and we're dealing with the joys and the not-so-joys of each. Today, we had a scare. We're glad it turned out well.
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