Decided to meet up with hubby this morning to go on a dog walk before hitting town to find a new bath. The second part never happened!
We took Sally off lead as soon as we got by the river. Other dog owners were doing the same, their dogs running alongside them. Sally did the same ... for about 1 minute then she spotted pheasants at one end of the field and made a bee-line. Then she spotted an open gate leading to a wooded area full of birds - and made a run for that too. We called, bellowed and whistled to no avail. We tried the reverse psychology card shouting 'Bye then Sally, we're going.' and walked ahead hoping she would run back to us. We walked for about half an hour then returned, cutting our walk short to find Sally. Sure enough we saw her in the area we had left her but she would not come to us. She just carried on running after birds. Eventually we walked back to the car park and bought hot bacon and egg sandwiches from a stand there before heading back to the woods to get Sally back. By this time she had run into the next woodland area, we saw her plainly several times but she just kept running away from us. Eventually it dawned on us that we had no time to shop for a new bath; we would have to leave her and go to our jobs for the afternoon.
We explained our predicament to the sandwich seller who took our phone number and the dog lead then off we went - albeit very reluctantly with nerves jangling.
I work about 11 miles from this place and don't visit the area often so it was a huge coincidence that I had a one off work meeting with over 100 people in the very place later that afternoon. At 5ish a colleague nudged me to tell me she'd seen my husband outside the doorway. He had come to tell me our son had had a message to say someone in the village had found Sally and wanted us to collect her. That was a relief. The only porblem was that our son had taken down the wrong phone number. I had to wait for another call to tell me the number. Eventually all was well. I met up with an old friend in the meeting who lived in the village and who let me use her phone and took me to the right place in the village where the woman was waiting. This friend even had a bunch of roses in her car that she gave me to give this person. How cool a coincidence was all of that? The poor woman had been waiting in the pitch black in a pub car park for over an hour with our naughty dog! She was very relieved when we eventually appeared to take Sally off her hands! I managed to get lost walking back to the car and thought the car had been stolen before I got my bearings - it was pitch black with no street lights and I don't know this place very well!!
When I got to my car I found the heater and fan had stopped working so had to drive home with my window wound down and was shattered and frozen by the time I reached home. Oh Sally!!!!
