Jack Ran Away and I Picked up a Stray.

So the other day I woke up the sound of all my metal porch furniture being drug across the porch. I hadn't been feeling well the night before so I had taken some over the counter cold medicine that had put me out as effectively as if I had been tranquilized as part of a study on adult human females. So of course my first thought upon waking out of my drugged stupor was that I had died and was in hell for my sins.

Hell sounded a lot like a steel cable hitting porch furniture.

So I put on whatever clothes were closest to me and blearily wandered to the porch to find what looked like a full size pure breed coon hound had broken loose from someone's yard dragging 15 feet of cable tie that she had proceeded to wrap around my front porch. At the slight on me she launched into a happy people dance and proceed to dump a chair and a table into the lawn.

I should also mention that I was leaving for a three day business trip the next day and really really didn't want to dump this problem on the farm sitter.

What followed was hours of talking to the neighbors, calling the vets, driving the dog around in the truck in the hopes somebody recognized her, putting a sign on the mailbox, and even having two people show up to look at her and take down my number. I should also point to those of you who are chanting call animal control I will point out that I did. Except they never did pick up their damn phone. And they are only open two hours a day. And they only keep dogs for 48 hours before sending them to that big kennel in the sky because they lack any real kennels.

Yeah.

So it pretty much became the farm sitters problem. Except in the middle of worky time I get a call saying that my dog, Jack, you know, the dog I got to “replace” Razzle my first ever dog after she died from a snake bite, you know the dog I was hoping that would fill that dog shaped hole in my heart and give me many great years to look forward, yeah that dog, well it turns out he had slipped off his lead and taken off on a magical journey with the new new dog.

The new dog who, from this moment on, shall be known as Stupidface Fuckbrain.

So Stupidface comes back, but Jack doesn't. Now as you may recall, Jack is a somewhat traumatized dog, from what we suspect was abuse followed by tow years in a kennel with only limited human interaction. He is not going to come up to people. If he doesn't find his own way home and start begging to come inside, then he is not coming home.

Period.

I would like to gloss over the next bit, which involved a lot of trails for everybody, including farm sitter who nearly bust a lung climbing around the fucking mountains trying to find Jack, the brief sighting of Jack Scott got while taking Stupidface Fuckbrain out for a walk because we had to keep her kenneled in Jack's kennel to protect the chickens, my desperate attempts wandering around the forest calling for a dog that I was not sure loved me enough to return to me, Scott's desire to keep Stupidface Fuckbrain, WHO HAS STOLEN MY DOGS PLACE, and the fact I am writing this when I should be sleeping because I am on the road again and far from home and wondering where my sweet little doggy boy is now.

So to recap, my car is still in the shop, we are still traveling in a rental car that is starting to smell less new car smell and more stale food and sweat smell, I am still waiting for the septic system to be approved (if it even will be or we will be stuck with the less desirable system), this the time of year I am gone the most because this is when the work is, and now my dog has run off to be replaced by a dog that thinks my cats and chickens are chew toys.

Um. So I may be under just a little stress right now.

Just a little.

Maybe a tad.

You know. Tiny bit.

AUGGGHHHHHH.