Dallas' Big Adventure
Her latest escapade happened while we were visiting Lindsay's grandmother in Dublin, Georgia. We went with Lindsay's parents and all of her siblings. It was a large crew and it included 4 yellow labs- all related. We had a great day at "the farm" riding the tractor, 4 wheeler, and letting the dogs run and run and run. We then went out to dinner, leaving the 4 labs "safely" in Lindsay's grandmother's back yard, fenced in.
We came back an hour and a half later to find Dallas missing and one of the labs, Dallas' sister, out of the yard. The other labs were still in the yard, but Dallas was no where to be found. She was gone.
To be fair she has done this before. She is a paradox- she has huge separation anxiety whenever we leave her, but she also has an independent, adventerous spirit. This day, her spirit of adventure won out. We panicked and had the whole family looking for her for two hours. Nothing. The problem was we were supposed to head back to Atlanta (a 3 hour drive) right after dinner, and then a few days later back to New Jersey.
Eventually we called off the search. We planned to stay overnight with Lindsay's grandmother and see where we stood in the morning. I was not optimistic. After an evening of driving and walking all over the neighborhood we were very tired. I went to bed, and quickly fell asleep. Our infant son Sam, 9 months, had an unusally hard time falling asleep. He cried and cried until I finally woke up.
Half asleep, I staggered over to the window just to look one more time. Incredibly, I heard the sound I had been waiting all night to hear: a distinctly Dallas bark. That bark echoed back and forth off of the houses on the street and was music to my ears. I peeked through the blinds and sure enough there she was, looking at the house as if to say, "hey, I want to go to bed too."
So what was Dallas doing during those 6 hours? We will never know. One person suggested that she had found an internet cafe and saw we were looking for her on Facebook so she came back. That person has never been to Dublin, Georgia. Whatever it was, we are very glad she made it back to us.
