Holding out hope for a lost pooch

It is quiet and a little sad around our house these days. One of our skunk eradicators, half of a dynamic duo, has succumbed to the call of the wild, been kidnapped (highly unlikely) or gotten lost. Her fate is currently unknown. We are guessing she and her partner were once again in pursuit of a visiting striped rodent, an animal we simply have been unable to keep outside of our dog’s defensive perimeter.

The two Jack Russell terriers have put to rest a dozen of those nocturnal visitors. We have no regrets about that. But the dog that is gone haunts us.

Every time I pass a window, I take a quick check to see if maybe, just maybe, Lexi has found her way back. Whenever we drive back up the street to our home we look, hoping. Often we take a less than direct route to expand the opportunity of seeing a little spot of white, wagging her tail. So far, no Lexi. A friend said that goes on for a long time. He and his wife check the surroundings whenever they drive home, too. He said they conduct that casual scan every time, looking for a cat that left the confines of their home eight years ago.

Another friend, John O’Neill, is a longtime member and supporter of the San Diego Humane Society. He tells me a cat that called O’Neill’s house home one day sometime ago slipped out an open door. Six months later it showed up on the stoop and strolled in when he opened the door. The one story replicates our approach. The second gives us hope.

A lot of people go through this, judging by the pet lost-and-found websites and the number of animals in various animal shelters around San Diego County. We’ve visited some of them numerous times.

Most of the pet shelters keep stray animals four days before they are put up for adoption. One attendant told us, in answer to my question about it, how long they keep an animal before they put it down.

“We don’t, unless they are seriously injured or very ill,” he said.

I asked O’Neill about that and he explained that the Humane Society has been working with all the shelters, urging them to offer found animals for adoption rather than destroy them. Most have adopted that policy.

That prompted another question.

“How do you house them all?”

They do Adopt-a-Pet days, O’Neill said.

Our search of the shelters, at the moment, is for Lexi, not adoption. As I said, it is a sad kind of activity. Space is limited, and cages are relatively small. And there are so many, most of them, I suspect, formerly part of a family like ours and now a source of someone else’s unhappiness.

Some people who visit these shelters do as I did, I imagine. I had tears, both because Lexi wasn’t there and because so many other dogs were.

We were out of town when Lexi took off. Our son was at our house dog-sitting. When he returned from work early on a Saturday morning Lexi was nowhere to be found. Milla, her fellow skunk eradicator, was waiting on the front porch. She is still adjusting to a missing Lexi.

There are about 78 million dogs in the United States. The vast majority of them are not lost. My perspective on those that are missing has changed. Lexi slipped out through a hole under the fence that almost assuredly was dug by a skunk. Lexi was wearing a dog tag and a radio collar but must have run through the triggering circuit before the system could administer a reminder jolt. She did not have a chip, something we will remedy when she returns. Milla will get a chip shortly, as O’Neill suggested.

Because of all of this we are doing things differently. We continue to try and make the backyard skunk-proof and escape-proof. When we are gone Milla will go to a boarding facility. Should we get another dog — not thinkable at the moment as it suggests we are giving up on finding Lexi — we most likely will adopt from a shelter. And should we see a stray we will do what we can to help return it to its family.

Unfortunately, none of that will bring back Lexi. In that regard we will continue to look for her and continue to hope.