I think about my lost dog as I drive home from work. This happens quite often. I work second shift and as I come home I drive past the skyline of Dayton. Dayton is not a big city by any accounts; you can walk the whole thing in ten square blocks. Small to most, huge to a Yorkshire Terrier. My dog Hermione, was lost back in the end of November. It’s January, Christmas has passed, New Years, times of joy and change, and I still think about her.
I have always been a person that has problems letting go of the past. I dwell on things way to long, sometime years past when I should have let it all go, but don’t. This is most likely one of those things, but knowing it changes nothing. I think about my lost dog.
In the city, where did she go? Is she alone still wandering, did someone find her, is it a good home? I miss her. A dog, I miss a dog. Silly to some, but some understand. Dogs become part of your family, your mate.
I bought Hermione in what was the worst part of my life. I had lost everything. Maybe looking back, everything is a big word. I hadn’t lost a child, or any kind of death. But my life was changed and would never be like it was. My new dog was there for me, when few were. When I was alone, I was not alone because she was there.
We would sit in my two-room apartment of one chair, one bookcase, an old TV, a bed and a dresser. I would cry, and she would lick my tears away, and sleep with me, when I hadn’t slept alone in years. Sappy, but true.
Things would get better, and she was there for that as well.
She was always an escape artist. Getting out when you were sure there was no way this time. Maybe this life was too little for her. Maybe as my life got better, and changed she didn’t feel like she was a part of the new life. Maybe she was just a dog that ran away a lot.
As I drive by the skyline I wonder often about her. I pretend to believe that she is in a good place. That she has found a new family that spends countless hours looking for her when she gets out of the yard. But I don’t know. All I know is when I miss her; she is not there to lick the tears away.
