The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night

[mbc1963]

So, my dog-walking friend and I are taking our traditional morning walk about 5:30 this morning, in the pitch black. We live in a typical densely-packed residential urban neighborhood. Suddenly, I see the outline of a golden retriever approaching me and my reactive Buddy. Quickly scanning the houses around us, my friend and I conclude that it's Echo, a youngish dog who lives in a nearby house. I'm doing my best "Noooo... Echo. Go home," and my friend manages to interest the dog in her much friendlier labrador, and manages to get him over to the yard. She works on the gate for a few minutes, finally succeeds in opening it, and puts the dog in the yard. She then comes over to me, and I congratulate her on her Girl Scout's duty well done.

 

She looks at me a bit oddly, and says, "I sure hope that was Echo!"

 

 

Mary

(It was Echo.)

[ejano]

So, my dog-walking friend and I are taking our traditional morning walk about 5:30 this morning, in the pitch black. We live in a typical densely-packed residential urban neighborhood. Suddenly, I see the outline of a golden retriever approaching me and my reactive Buddy. Quickly scanning the houses around us, my friend and I conclude that it's Echo, a youngish dog who lives in a nearby house. I'm doing my best "Noooo... Echo. Go home," and my friend manages to interest the dog in her much friendlier labrador, and manages to get him over to the yard. She works on the gate for a few minutes, finally succeeds in opening it, and puts the dog in the yard. She then comes over to me, and I congratulate her on her Girl Scout's duty well done.

 

She looks at me a bit oddly, and says, "I sure hope that was Echo!"

 

 

Mary

(It was Echo.)

 

This is a long story and sad in a way, but funny in another. My cousin's husband raises beagles and one day his neighbor called to say one of his beagles had gotten out (this particular one was a house pet) and had been struck and killed by a car and was lying along side the road. Devastated that the dog had somehow gotten out of the house, he went with his son to collect the dog and bury it. The husband was so upset he could barely look at the dog, so his son, who was married and lived away from home and wasn't as attached to the dog, wrapped up the dog and carried it home for burial.

 

Because the dog had been ill as a pup and had received a great deal of attention from the family, she had become a special pet. As you can imagine, the family was very upset and everyone was in the kitchen crying when all of a sudden they heard the unmistakable ticking of a dog with longish nails coming down the oak staircase and through the hardwood floor in the living room to the kitchen to see what all the excitement was about. The children were absolutely hysterical, believing they were seeing a ghost, but my cousin and her husband figured out pretty quickly that little Sammi was definitely alive and they had, in their grief, collected and buried a dog that belonged to someone else in the area, whom they now had to locate and explain that a) the dog was deceased and 2) had already been given a beautiful funeral.

 

My cousin said that seeing that dog made her better understand the bible story of Lazarus rising from the grave!

[Tommy Coyote]

Oh, that is so funny. And sad. At the same time.