Our large dog, Pepper, has vanished. He's old, and he has some struggle with arthritis or something similar in his hips. He lives outside, in an invisible fence set-up. This morning he seemed a little sluggish, but that's not all that unusual. During the day there was a terrible thunderstorm; when we got home, he's nowhere to be found.
We are hopeful that the battery on his collar ran down, allowing him to run for the hills when the lightning started striking; he definitely hated loud noises. But Carol is concerned that he snuck out into the woods to die; the invisible fence would allow him to go about 120 yards from the house.
With luck, he will limp back home tonight.
dave
That's always worrisome...I hope for the best for him!
Here's the deal with Pepper. I went out around 9 with a flashlight; honestly I was afraid I was looking for a body. He's black with a white chest and tail; I was hopeful that I would not find him dead, but knew that white chest would pop in the flashlight if he was.
Wandered the streets of the neighborhood by car, calling and whistling for him. Came back home and started combing through some of the wooded areas close to the house. There's a natural creek that runs close to the house. On our property we have let it remain wild (that's my rationale for being too lazy to tame it); I fought through that for a while, staying close to the creek. No luck, but when I came to the edge of our property, the going got easier, and I decided to stay close to the creek, thinking that maybe when he got away from the house, he would have to have water at some point (the heat index was about 104 yesterday.)
Got a couple hundred feet into the third neighbors yard, and there he was, standing in water about 6 inches deep. He had gone into the creek, and then apparently his gimpy legs were not strong enough to get him out. Worse, there's nowhere in the creek that's shallow enough for him to put his head down, so he'd been standing there for God knows how long.
I jumped in the creek and tried to fish him out; he is a 75-pounder, and I am a notorious weakling. The third attempt I got about 2/3 of him above the creek bed, and sort of flipped him up (gently) and onto the ground. By that time the neighbor had come out to see what his dog was barking about. Thank goodness for that, because he had an oversized wheel barrow, and together we got the dog into it and back home.
I was a little worried because Pepper would not stand up, but I think he was just exhausted. Later when I took the little dog Pippin out to visit, Pepper at least stood up, so we are going to see if he's walking this morning, and take him to the vet to be checked out.
Our theory is that he ran off during the awful thunderstorm, and when he ran, found out that the collar on his invisible fence was not working (when the battery goes out, we often don't find out for a while, because he doesn't ever really try to leave the house anymore anyway) and ran for the hills. Or in this case, the steep watery valley.
Thanks for all the nice notes and tweets I got. So far so good!
