The back door banged open.
“Mommy, Mommy,” called our five-year-old daughter, Micah, coming in from running errands with her father, and racing toward the kitchen. “Daddy and I saw a lost dog!” she exclaimed.
“We already have a dog,” I wanted to say. As if on cue, Princess, our pug, came running.
Michael followed Micah into the kitchen. “I told Micah that dinner was waiting and if the dog didn’t have a home it would still be there when we finished.”
“Where was it?” I asked Michael.
“In front of the field by the corner,” he said. “Just sitting there. No tags or anything.”
Wayward dogs were not an uncommon sight in our rural neighborhood. In the months that we’d lived in our new house, we’d been visited by a Labrador, a Boston Terrier, a miniature Schnauzer, a tiny Pomeranian and a big white Golden Retriever.
What we never seemed to meet was a girl Micah’s age or a mom who worked at home like I did and might enjoy a coffee break or playdate with our kids.
I had such high hopes when we bought our house last summer. The real estate agent said there were lots of kids in the neighborhood. There was even a girl about Micah’s age right next door.
I remembered growing up on a block with tons of kids and our moms exchanging recipes over the fence or sunbathing on lawn chairs while we ran through sprinklers. But in the time we’d been here, I’d hardly seen a child.
One evening I dropped by the neighbor’s. The mom was nice enough and the daughter hovering behind her skirt certainly looked Micah’s age, but the woman said that she and her husband worked during the day and once their daughter came home from daycare and they got dinner out of the way it was practically time for bed.
“What about weekends?” I said hopefully. No, weekends wouldn’t work either. They usually had a stepdaughter visiting and their schedule was very busy…
I walked home in utter dismay. “Lord,” I moaned, “I want to find a neighborhood friend for Micah and one for me too. Isn’t there someone in all these houses?” As it was, I was driving 20 minutes each way for playdates in our old neighborhood.
“Mommy, can we keep the dog?” Micah asked now.
“We’ve got Princess,” I said, dishing out supper.
“The dog probably lives in the house by the field,” said Michael. “He just got out. We’ll let the people know he’s there.”
“When can we go?”
“Soon as dinner is finished.”
We ate hurriedly and piled into the car. Michael drove to the corner and slowed at the field. No dog. The sun was sinking low on the horizon and the sky blazed with streaks of orange. I could hear a coyote howl in the woods beyond. This was not a safe place for a stray. We should have come earlier.
“There he is, getting a drink,” called Micah. She pointed to a pond at the edge of the field. Michael stopped the car. I opened the door to see a small white Jack Russell lapping up the water.
“Here, boy,” I hollered. He looked at us quizzically and then came running. He leapt past me into the back seat and plopped right next to Micah, his front paws in her lap. We all started laughing.
“He can’t be a stray,” Michael said. “Not with behavior like that.” We drove him to the house by the pond, but the man there shook his head. He didn’t have a dog and didn’t know anyone nearby who had a Jack Russell. We tried another house. Nobody there had lost a dog.
“What should we name him?” Micah said, stroking his back. I hesitated. I’d been praying for a playmate for Micah, not another dog.
Michael looked thoughtfully at Micah in the rearview mirror before pulling out of the driveway. “That black around his eye is distinctive,” he finally said. “Let’s call him Patch.”
“For now,” I added.
At home we gave Patch a bath and a bowl of food, then I took his picture and made fliers with his photo on them. That night, while Michael and Micah played with the dog, I drove four miles in each direction, taping posters on utility poles: “Have You Lost Your Dog?”
I had to admit, he was pretty cute. And he was easy to have at home. Before bed I put soft blankets down on the floor of the bathroom next to our bedroom. “Here, boy,” I showed him. He circled three times and lay down. The only sound we heard from there all night was soft snoring.
We didn’t get one phone call about a lost dog. The next morning I put him out in the yard with Princess. Micah played with both dogs while I called all the animal shelters. No, nobody had called about a lost Jack Russell with a black patch over his eye.
It was hard to believe that a dog this cute and well-behaved didn’t have a home.
Over breakfast I wracked my brain about what to do. I could put an ad in the classifieds and ask more of my neighbors. If only I knew more people around. Micah practically inhaled her Cheerios so she could go back outside. But when we stood up from the table and looked out, Patch was gone.
“Mommy, where did he go?” Micah said mournfully.
“I don’t know, honey. He must have gotten out.” I looked at the fence we had for Princess. Evidently a Jack Russell could squeeze right out between those bars. We opened the gate and went searching in the woods behind out property. “Patch! Patch!” Micah called.
“We’ll go look in the car, honey,” I said. For the next hour we drove slowly around the neighborhood, checking every side street. Defeated, we came back home. I noticed a red light blinking on the answering machine.
I played the message: “I saw the flier for the lost dog…well, it must have gotten lost again because I just found it.”
Micah jumped and hugged me and I dialed the number. The woman’s name was Christy. She lived only two streets away. She too had recently moved to the neighborhood and had a young son named Mason.
“We’ll be right over,” I said. She answered the door in sweatpants and a T-shirt. “Why don’t you have a cup of coffee?” she said. “We can let the kids play with the dog.”
Soon Mason and Micah were tearing around the backyard and Christy and I were talking about schools and kids and what supermarket we liked. We glanced out at the kids throwing balls for the dog and swinging on the swing set.
Micah was over a year older and about a head taller than Mason, but it didn’t seem to matter. She had found a friend.
“That’s a pretty cute dog,” Christy said.
“No one’s called to claim him,” I said. “I wish we could keep him ourselves, but we’ve got another dog at home and this one can squeeze right out between the slats in our fence.”
“Well, if you don’t find his owner,” Christy said, “I’d love to take him. I’m home all day and a dog would be good company.”
Perhaps I don’t need to tell you any more. No one ever called about Patch despite my efforts, but that was just fine. He is very happy in his new home.
Micah and I love to visit Christy and Mason, our newest best friends. They were an answer to prayer…but we needed the help of a lost dog to guide us straight to them.
