man's best friend? ha!

It was a fairly ordinary Monday morning.  I was getting ready for work and getting the girls ready for daycare - preparing lunches for me and Faith, and bottles of pumped milk for Josie.  We got out the door and as I was buckling them into their carseats, I could hear Ollie barking like a maniac (as he tends to do) in the house behind me.  I noticed the gas tank was almost empty, so we stopped for gas, which took a RIDICULOUSLY long time, and as we were pulling out of the gas station, I realized I had left the bottles and lunches at home in the fridge.

Sighing mightily, I turned us around and drove home; it had been about 20 minutes total since we left.  I left the car sitting in the driveway and ran inside.  As I was grabbing the bags from the fridge, cursing under my breath for running late, I saw that Ollie had pulled some trash from the (admittedly overflowing) kitchen trash can, and cursed under my breath some more.

"Ollie!!  Bad dog!!"

Silence.

That was weird.  Ollie is not the kind of dog to be aloof or hide when we come home (is there any dog like that?).

"Ollie?"

I started hunting around the house for him, under all the beds, in every closet, behind the drapes.  I looked in every place I could imagine him hiding, and even places where there was no way he could be (the kitchen cupboards, behind the bookcases, under the dressers). All the doors and windows were still shut and locked.  At this point, honestly, I could only see two possible scenarios:

1- Someone had come into our house and, leaving everything else where it was, taken Ollie out of the house for some inexplicable reason.  They were a dog-thief?  He was barking and annoying them?  They were spying through our window and saw that he was sick/injured and wanted to take him to the pet hospital?  All of these seemed, admittedly, unlikely.

2- He had choked on the aluminum foil he'd dragged from the trash can (or had had some other mishap) and had crawled into some hiding place I hadn't thought of yet, and was dead.  This seemed slightly more likely, though very depressing - and I couldn't imagine where he was hiding.

I called Jack at work just to make sure he hadn't come home and picked Ollie up for some reason, or gotten a call about him (he hadn't), then I reluctantly called my work and asked them to reschedule my appointments (which made me feel like a terrible doctor, rescheduling for such a stupid reason, but I didn't know what else to do).  Then I searched the house once more.  Still no dog.

I was totally mystified, because I KNEW he had been in our house when I left (I remembered his maniacal barking, and there was the evidence of the desecrated trash can).  But I supposed the next thing was to search the neighborhood.  By this point Josie and Faith were both whining and crying due to being ignored and left buckled in their car seats (with the windows OPEN, people, and in our DRIVEWAY, don't worry, I'm not a terrible parent).

It turned out our next-door neighbor had seen a friendly-looking dog running around by the elementary school (which is 3 blocks away), who looked gray from a distance (Ollie is black-and-white spotted).  After some further investigation, I learned that it was indeed my dog; the school principal had caught him, and he was now in the custody of the base's animal control.

When I went to pick him up, he was happy and panting, and totally unashamed of himself.

Dumbass.

all tired out after his "adventure"

(I still have no idea how he got out of the house.)