Our Blessed Dog

Getting her Beauty rest after a run.

You may know that our rescue dog, Beauty, is a runner.

She will run for 10 miles in the morning, snooze for the day, then is ready for more play and racing around by dinner time.

She's well trained to stay in our yard...unless she sees a squirrel. Or a dog. Which is why when we leave her out for a while we put her on a tie-out in our front yard.

Saturday was no exception -- she was going crazy inside watching all the squirrels through the windows, I figured I'd give her a first row seat by putting her on the tie-out so she could observe more closely.

About 10 minutes later Wayne says to me, "Where's Beauty?"

"On the tie-out," I say.

"No she's not."

"Yes she is. I put her there myself."

I go out front to look, and the leash that she had been attached to is lying in a pile. No Beauty. We investigate it. It's not broken, and it almost looks like someone coiled it and laid it on the lawn.

Outside of the concern that someone may have nabbed her, her disappearing act is a familiar routine. I grab shoes, the leash and a dog treat, and Wayne heads to the car to search the neighborhood, both of us with cell phones.

I post on NextDoor, a social media site for neighborhoods, and Facebook. I get lots of sympathy but no leads.

Since it's like searching for a needle in the haystack by walking the neighborhood, we both eventually return home empty-handed. I post a better description of her on NextDoor with photos, and wait to hear.

Finally, someone posts that they found a brown pitbull, please call their number. I leapt to call, and discovered that they indeed had our dog.

Here's the best part.

Beauty had pulled on the leash so hard she had snapped the metal ring that held the leash to her collar. When it snapped her identifying tags also flew off -- we found them later scattered in the lawn.  It explains why the leash was in a neat pile, it was from the recoil.

 Beauty's broken collar.

She chased said squirrels for a while, and then got distracted by a dog going in to the Lutheran church just a block away. Turns out that the Lutheran church was having a blessing of the animals that day. The people brought her into the church to see if it was someone else's loose dog. They figured she was a stray, but she was so sweet and nice to the other dogs that they had her join the service. After all, that's what this service was all about, right? Don't just bless the dogs who have loving homes, but the strays, the unwanted by society. (Or so they may have thought.)

She got to visit with other dogs, get treats, and get a little holy water sprinkled on her head. We were worried she was in danger of being hit by a car, and she was safe inside, getting pampered.

Beauty was blessed. Literally.

After the ceremony they posted on NextDoor about finding the pitbull, then walked her down to our house for a joyful reunion.

Guess this means we should start going to church.