The Whisler Life

*NOTE: Since we do not yet have a child to fill our lives with excitement and interesting things to write about, you must all be subjected to similar stories involving our DOG.

It was a dark and stormy night… oh wait, no, it was this past Friday afternoon.  I was at Bill’s house helping him load up the tools and supplies we’d need to work on his cabin in Northwoods, NE of Cougar, Washington.  We packed the back of his pickup truck with all the necessities, including very long pieces of lumber that stuck out of the back of the canopy window, leaving just enough room for Beau to sit for the hour and a half drive.  With everything loaded except the dog, I collected Beau and tossed him in his spot.  Since the lumber stuck out of the canopy, the window would not close, so I strung two bungee cords in an ‘X’ across the opening in a vain attempt to discourage the dog from jumping out.  Beau has never ridden in an ‘open’ environment in a car, but he has also never expressed any desire to jump from a moving vehicle!

And so goes the story.  We headed away from the house, slowly, since Old Germantown Road is very narrow and full of sharp switchbacks.  In the first minute of the ride I probably looked back on Beau from the cab two or three times and all was well.  Bill and I were busy talking until the road was about the intersect with Germantown Road proper.  I once again look back at Beau quickly, and then turned my head to face the front again… wait… Did I see Beau?  I looked back again, and sure enough, no Beau!  Oh my God… last week my husband tried to die on me, and now my dog has attempted suicide by jumping out of this moving truck!!!

I tried to remember the last place I had looked back to check on him, but couldn’t exactly remember.  We turned the truck around and started to backtrack to the house.  I was sure that we’d find his mangled, badly injured little body lying on the side of the road.  We drove all the way back to the house, thinking that maybe he’d made his way back there.  Nope… worse than a mangled dog, we didn’t find ANY dog!  We drove away from the house again, and roughly where I last remembered looking at Beau in the back of the truck, I got out to walk on foot while Bill drove to the top of the road again.  (I had also called Patrick and Chad at this point, to encourage them to head our way to help us look for the suicide attempting dog)  So I’m calling Beau’s name and whistling for him, but no doggy was to be found.  I started thinking, ok, he’s got his collar on, and that has his county ID tag and rabies tag, and he’s microchipped, so if someone picks him up they’ll be able to track us down, right?  Boy, am I glad we sprung for that microchip!

At just about that point, Bill’s truck came round the bend, and I give him the shoulder shrug and a disappointed and confused look - and then I see Beau’s black and white head and pink tongue peeking over the dashboard.  Bill had found him!  Where the hell was he?!?!  Bill said he was just sitting on the side of the road as if simply waiting for our imminent return.  Needless to say, he got to sit at my feet in the cab for the rest of the ride.  He wasn’t hurt, thank goodness, but he was rather sheepish and very mellow for the rest of the weekend (very out of character if you know Beau).  I think he gave himself a good scare (and me!) and I don’t plan on putting him in anything but a hermetically sealed truck ever again!

The end.

P.S. I’m SO grateful that my two recent stories have had happy endings… let’s just hope that doesn’t change, eh?