Life in the Big City

What Are the Odds?

So yesterday was a kick-ass, beautiful day, and Brian suggested we head out to the ranch and hike around, a delightful idea. We pack up the baby and the dogs and drive on out there at about 3 p.m. We put on our hiking boots and started climbing through the woods. We headed over the creek and up towards the cliff. And this is when we lost the dog. Again. No dog. Chickendog, of course, being her wonderful, dependable, well behaved self, is stuck to us like glue. Hamish is gone, gone, gone. We kept on hiking up to the cliff, and stopped for a bit to take in the lovely view. The sun was starting to go down so we headed back towards the car. All this time, of course, we're calling out for Hamish, but there's no sign of him. You have to picture very dense Cedar trees, on rocky, hilly terrain. We couldn't see very far in any direction because of the trees. In fact, we got lost on our way back because it's so hard to find your way around in this stuff. When we went through the fence and shut the gate behind us I was in tears, thinking of poor Hamish stuck back there all alone, but there was nothing to be done. We had the baby with us, no flashlight, it would be totally dark in less than an hour, we had to go back to the car.

As it was, we barely made it back before the light was gone, and we drove over to Brian's aunt's house feeling worried and dejected. They were all gearing up for a nice meal of black eyed peas, which was what we had been planning for dinner also. We headed back to town. Of course, driving away from the ranch back towards the highway, what should we find but someone else's loose dog..."what are the odds?" I said to Brian, as we picked him up and headed back towards his house. We deposited him (he was a sweet black lab, I wanted to take him home with me) with his doggy friends and went on to Brian's place.

I cooked up some fabulous Hoppin' John, Brian mixed up some margaritas, we both got hammered and started watching To Catch A Thief. Which, by the way, just didn't capture my interest. Maybe it was the margarita or the missing dog, but I just wasn't digging it.

The phone rang at 12:26. It was Brian's aunt Pam. Her dogs had been going crazy so she headed outside and heard barking far away. Bless her heart, she grabbed a flashlight and went down to the creek where she retrieved my dumb, skinny, scatterbrained, beautiful Border Collie.

One of these days we'll drink that champagne.