So the story goes a little like this.

Last night we had friends over for a little while. When they left at around 6pm Dookie must have got out with us and we didn’t notice. Dookie is not allowed out the front because we have no fence on a fairly busy road where people do a lot of speeding. Not to mention that having Jaxon out with us is stressful enough!

We came inside and we had dinner. We watched some TV. Did some block building and had our baths. Jaxon went to bed at about 8pm and Tim and I did our own thing (wink wink, thanks for calling Dad) Then when we resurfaced Jaxon was awake and it was only then that I noticed I hadn’t seen Dookie for some time.

Four hours had gone by and it was dark. But I got in the car and I drove the streets looking for him for a little over an hour. At each end of our street there are four cross roads. Dookie could have been anywhere. We really had to wait until morning to call vet’s and pounds and pet shops.

I made all of those call’s at 8am and then printed out the poster in the previous message and put them all around town. All while Jaxon sat in the back seat of the car saying over and over “Bye Bye Dookie, Dookie gone”.

I checked the pound. No Dookie. My last thought was that right at the end of our street, along a dirt road that leads to a big petrol station right out of town, I should put a poster up there. In case he had gone that way.

I asked the lady behind the counter if I could put up my sign and…she had SEEN Dookie! A lady had knocked on her door at about 7pm  the night before with him looking for his owners. She lived just around the corner from me and gave me the address of the house that she thought this lady with Dookie lived in.

That was an empty house. So I crossed the road and knocked on someone else’s door and THEY had seen Dookie with the same woman the night before at 8pm. They’d also seen me driving by really slowly the night before. These people told me that the lady with our dog lived just around the corner from them, which also happened to be where WE live. So the person with Dookie was in one of only ten or so houses.

At 1.30pm this afternoon the phone rang and the man on the other end of the phone had Dookie in his back yard. He said I could go and get him and told me the address.

Well. The man on the phone who had Dookie in his back yard is our very new neighbor (and best friend for life!) He only moved in last weekend and didn’t know we had a dog.

So Dookie is home safe now and we’re all very happy. Dookie nearly tore my legs to shreds when I jumped the fence. He was So excited to see me!