Searching for Sadie
Earthquake, cop shooting, a once-golden U.S. company filing for the biggest bankruptcy in our history on top of the unseemly, increasingly desperate acts of a once-Golden state--all this gives new meaning to term June gloom. It's come right on schedule, gray skies, hard drizzle (or is that hard skies and gray drizzle?) and all. The kind of scenario that has the tropic-minded tourists circling their hotels in shorts and sandals and feeling totally ripped off. And what's worrying me the most this morning? You got it. Lost dogs. One in particular named Sadie. I know, I know. Big things are falling apart all around me, so I focus on the one small thing it appears I can control. The one disaster I can turn around. Sadie is a coal-black Lab/Shepard mix who showed up on my neighbor's side porch on Friday. She'd tucked herself there and wasn't moving. I was relieved; she was the fourth lost dog I'd come across in as many days, but the only one who wasn't running off. Dogs can be tougher to corral than cats, especially if they're fearful or confused. And I've seen a real spate of those dogs lately, as foreclosures, evictions and the number of vacant houses in my neighborhood go up slowly but mercilessly. The dogs aren't strays, they're unwanteds or untenables. They look groomed and have collars; they used to be somewhere. They seem shocked at finding themselves not there anymore and on the street. In other words, nowhere.
That's how Sadie was looking. That was the name I gave her as my husband and I worked to gain her trust, feeding her food from our palms as she lay wide-eyed and almost frozen in her porch alcove. Eventually her eyes calmed and she let us sit next to her, then pet her, then rub her ears. Once she even got up from her spot to eat a pie tin of food that we placed on the driveway, but she hastened back. After two nights on the porch, we gave her a blanket and figured we'd take her today to the shelter. If nobody claimed her after five days, we were going to take her out and get her placed with a rescue group that we knew well. We had a bailout plan for Sadie. It was a good one, with no downsides. We assumed success.
But assuming is dangerous. This morning we woke up to discover that Sadie was gone. I patrolled the neighborhood for half an hour in my car, but no luck. I can't help but feel that I let her down, that this dog was giving me the opportunity to do something and I didn't quite do it. My hindsight says I should have leashed her up, worked to get her off the porch. I should have talked her down from the cliff; unfortunately, I mistook peril for security. It's what we've all been doing for way too long, even those who knew better. May we all find our way home.
The image associated with this story was taken by Flickr user posixeleni. It was used under Creative Commons license.
