Our Crazy Dog Charley

We got home from Thanksgiving dinner at C's brother's house and discovered that our beloved black lab was missing from our back yard. Our chocolate lab was home, but conspicuously alone. Now, I should tell you that our dog Charley was misnamed. We named her Charley because she was born on the eve of Hurricane Charley that hit the state of Florida. It also hit our old house pretty hard, shattering a window (what a mess that made!), downing some of our trees and branches, knocking down our fence, and messing with a few shingles. We were quite lucky, though, because many of our neighbors did not fair as well as us. So somehow, this dog received her name in commemoration of how God kept us safe in the storm. We will never forget that time in our lives. Why would we sometimes think that we should have called her something else? Because she's constantly getting out of where she's supposed to be. We jokingly call her Houdini based on her personality. It's been a constant battle for the 3+ years we have had her in our family.

Well, we all hopped on our Kubota ATV and drove around our property, and that of several surrounding neighbors. We kept calling for Charley, and searching for a black dog in sometimes dense shrubby land on a very black night. The Kubota is diesel and quite noisy, so we had to stop and turn off the engine while we called for her and listened for her response. Only trouble is, she's not much of a barker. Our chocolate lab Cocoa barks a lot. In fact she barks so much that we kept hearing her barking the whole time we were gone looking for Charley! Her voice really travels the distance. "You're not helping us find her, Cocoa!"

After about 45 min. of searching in the dark, we finally found her. She never did bark out to alert us. We ended up seeing her eyes shining in the light of the ATV. But we found her trapped! We live near a dried up lake (glorified pond!). There are a bunch of tall and thick cattails near the edge of our property. She likes to charge into them to see all the birds she can kick out of them. Evidently, she got through the cattails, and found herself in a fenced in open area, surrounded by cattails in every direction. She couldn't find her way out. It was dark outside so we couldn't see much either other than what the headlights of the Kubota would shine on depending on where we parked. Both boys had to climb over the fence and try and lift a 55 lb. wriggling dog up high enough that C could reach over the fence and grab her. They tried a few times and failed because Charley does not like to be picked up. She's her "own dog" and doesn't like people messing with her ears for cleaning, her toenails for clipping, or apparently her body for saving! The guys finally got her into the back bed of the Kubota, and we made our way home. But not without a scolding about how naughty she had been and why on earth couldn't she be a dog content to stay out of trouble? Instead, she remains, our Houdini.