A Dog Story

True story. Many years ago we had a dog named Heidi. She was a beagle/lab, which means she was a beagle on stilts.

Heidi was extremely smart. If we so much as muttered the words dinner, food, eat, outside, walk, leash, the dog, Heidi, or a lot of other things, her ears pricked up, even if she was in a sound sleep. We had to start spelling within her earshot, especially anything pertaining to her.

During the warmer months she spent the night in the backyard. One morning she wasn't at the door waiting for her breakfast (she knew that word too), so I called her and found that she wasn't in the yard. I walked around and found that the inside garage door to the backyard had blown open because my husband had been too lazy to close the big garage door as he drove off to work that morning. In the past when she had gotten out, she'd be sitting on the front porch waiting for us, but no Heidi. It was quite windy that morning, so it dawned on me the her sniffer might be confused after her trek around the neighborhood, and she couldn't find her way home.

Then, the phone rang. Someone found Heidi on the side of a busy street a half mile away. She had just been hit by a car. Her dog tag had our telephone number on it, so her rescuer called us from a cell phone. When we got there, she was surrounded by several people who had seen the accident, including the driver. They all wished us the best as we rushed her to the vet. She was awake, bewildered, and could no longer use or feel her left front leg. The vet said to give it time, but from that point on, she was a three-legged dog.

Which was okay. She was still our Heidi. I know one thing, without her ID tags, we may have lost our usually really smart dog.