Lost and Found

Belle ran away yesterday. I had a friend and her kids over to see the house, and Belle made a break for it. One of the girls came running into the house and said "We lost one of your dogs!"

Belle runs away from me on a regular basis in Michigan. She usually shows up a couple hours later at someone else's house - eating doggie treats and being treated like a queen. The animal shelter probably knows her by name. I'm not even sure they have shelters for dogs here since there are probably 150 stray dogs per square mile! Plus, Belle doesn't know her way around - so we figured we would never see her again.

I recruited our neighbor Freddie - who does not speak ANY English - to help me search. We walked around the property for nearly an hour - me in my flip-flops sliding down dirty gravel hills and brushing past sharp thorn bushes. Fun. When Michael came home, we walked all over the place! We walked down a gravel road for miles. Past other houses, farms, donkeys, lots of barking dogs. We had a whole chorus of dogs going at it - probably more frantically than usual because of Michael's booming voice screaming Belle's name every now and then out of the blue. We saw a dog run by every 10 minutes - but it was never Belle.

We finally gave up after the sun went down and it was getting difficult to see anything. We ran a few errands and figured we would never see our dog again. When we got back to the house around 9:30 pm - there she sat by the front door. I didn't know whether to kick her or hug her. As she came to greet us, she sank lower and lower to the ground until her stomach was dragging on the driveway. A classic sign acknowledging that she was a very bad dog! We are thankful she came back. Hopefully she didn't have an affair with one of the many street dogs during her little adventure. That's all we need is more animals running around here.

Belle gets some love from my mom during their visit.

Speaking of Belle and Sadie, now they are BOTH missing one of their front teeth on the bottom of the mouth. Belle lost hers a few years ago when Michael threw a stick up in the air and she tried to catch it - her tooth cracked right off. Last week, Michael threw a stick and Belle and Sadie both went after it - not paying attention to each other. They collided and Sadie came out with a bloody mouth and a missing tooth. Like mother, like daughter.

On another note, the ringworm is healing. I feel so much better! Thanks for your prayers.

Michael and I are going to South Padre Island this weekend with several other Innotec families. We will leave tomorrow at 8 am and return on Sunday before dark. Please pray for safe travels.