When Zoe was Simon's age (2-ish), we decided to get a dog. Now, if you know Nathan, you know that there is no such thing as an unresearched purchase. Everything of any value that we buy must be of the best quality and for the best price. Another thing about Nathan is that he kind of has a tendency to obsess. So for the last maybe 10 years of his existence, Nathan has had an obsession with Old English Bull Dogs. Unfortunately, the Old English Bull Dog of Nathan standards, comes with a price tag of over two thousand dollars. He was willing to wait it out for his dream dog, but me, I wanted a puppy for Zoe and I wanted it sooner rather than later. So one day I found an ad in our local ad paper for puppy Pugs. Ten minutes on Google and I knew I had found our compromise dog. I told Nathan, "It's a little Bull Dog!" and by the afternoon had him convinced to drive out and see these puppies. And of course, who could resist a solid black baby pug?
We bought him, named him Neville, and took him home.
Now if you know Neville at all, you know that he is a bit of an escape artist. He loves to follow people and at our old house learned all the various escape routes placed around our unreliable fence. He never ran off maliciously, but rather just to see what was going on down the road, or where those running people were going, and maybe what the good smell was coming from the park.
We soon learned to put every piece of information we could onto his tags. We had three phone numbers, our address, everything. And somehow if no one brought him back to us by the end of the day, he would miraculously appear at the door by dusk.
When we moved out to Custer he slowly stopped running away. The neighbors brought him home a couple of times from across the street, but after the first month, he just ran around the 10 acres and seemed satisfied. That was, until the day before Thanksgiving. He wasn't wearing his collar since he had just had a bath and when he didn't come back that night, we knew we would have to wait until after the Holiday to call the various shelters. For the first time ever, no one had him and he didn't come back on his own.
We told Zoe he was gone and we were sad. He might have been quite the devil, but we missed him.
To make a long story short, he came back yesterday. Nathan and I were out getting Christmas presents, but my Dad said that he just came back to the front door. He was wearing this fancy bandana collar and his coat was all shiny and clean. He had found a sugar mama.
Zoe and Simon were really happy.
