Faulkner
Member
Most recent picture of Daisy playing in the rain earlier this week.
CHAPTER 1
It was my day off and I hopped in my pickup for a run to town to the post office and hardware store. I’d only been gone about 20 minutes when my cell phone rang, it was Mrs. Faulkner.
“Hello,” I answered
“Hey Honey, is Daisy with you?”
“No, I told you when I left that I was leaving her out,” I said.
“That’s what I thought,” she answered, “but she’s not here. I’ve called and called and she’s not anywhere.” I could sense the concern in her voice. “I heard her barking earlier and I assumed she was harassing that big ole fox squirrel that messes with her. I looked out a minute or so later to check on her and didn’t see her, but I did see a car I’ve not seen before out by the mailbox.”
“Okay, I’ll be home in about 15 minutes . . . just stay there on the porch in case she shows up.” I told her. Even with her challenges with Parkinson’s Disease, my wife still gets around quite well, but she knows I don’t like her roaming outside at the homestead alone.
She had reason to be concerned. I spend a lot of time with Daisy making sure she’s well trained. Our house place is on six acres and she has the run of the place during the day, but nowhere else. Although the homestead is fenced off, it’s only 5 strand barbed wire which she can easily crawl under. Even so, from experience in her training she knows bad things happen when she goes under the wire without my command. We also own additional property adjacent that is pasture and hay fields, but she’s been trained not leave the homestead without me. Our previous border collie, Champ, was thus trained and would not leave the homestead without me and I had 99% confidence in her on this matter. Daisy is a smart dog and takes to training well, but she’s still young and at this point I have about 90% confidence that she wouldn’t venture off. At night she has a 30x30 foot chain link pen she stays in.
I left the hardware store and skipped the post office stop and headed home. After 35+ years living with a LEO my wife is not prone to panic, but she and Daisy have developed a special bond in the short time she’s been added to the family. I could tell she was worried.
When I pulled into our driveway, which is about 150 yards long up slight incline to the house, I noticed several squirrels milling about under the white oak tree, definitely not something that we see if Daisy is out and about. She and the squirrels play “cat & mouse”, so to speak, on and off most of the day and she keeps a sharp eye out for the bushy tailed critters when they come down out of the trees. Seeing squirrels about meant Daisy was not. As I pulled up to the house I saw my wife sitting in a rocker on the front porch.
“Hey, have you seen her,” I asked as I got out the truck.
“No, not seen or heard her. She always comes when I call her and she hasn’t. I’m starting to get worried.”
I whistled a couple of times to see if she would come to my call. Nothing.
She said, “I called Mrs. Pete across the road and asked if Daisy had been over there. Mrs. Pete laughed and said they’ve never seen Daisy over there. She said she walked down to put mail in the mailbox this morning and saw Daisy doing her morning stalk of the squirrels, but that was before you left for town.”
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll fire up the ATV and take a look around. Call the other neighbors and see if they’ve seen anything.”
“I already have,” she replied. “The one’s that are home have not seen her. Just like Mrs. Pete, they say Daisy never comes around unless she’s with you.”
“Well, her collar has her name and my cell phone number on it if she comes upon someone who doesn’t recognize her,” I said.
I hopped on my ATV and started it up. Often times just the sound of the ATV engine is enough to get her running for the barn. She loves to go with me when I go out checking on the cattle or tooling around the place on the ATV. Not this time, though. I rode completely around the fence line of our six acres and stopped at each corner to give a whistle and then listen for a bit. Nothing. I opened the back gate and rode across the pasture to the far end, and then went to the other end where most of the cows seemed to be grazing. She was not hanging out with the cows either.
I made my way back to the homestead to see if she’d showed back up. Mrs. Faulkner was still on the porch and raised her hands indicating “no”. I decided I’d go back down to the road on the ATV and go one way a half mile or so, and if no luck, would turn and go the other way. At this point, I was starting to have to consider unpleasant alternatives. I was looking for fresh blood spatter on the road in case she had been hit by a car, and look in the ditch on either side in case she was hurt. I certainly wasn’t prepared to tell Mrs. Faulkner that is what I was doing, but it was time to expand the investigation. So I went east a little over half a mile with no sign of her. I saw a few of my neighbor’s dogs out and about and they didn’t seem to be interested in anything abnormal, so I turned around and checked the other side of the road way. Once I got back to our place, I repeated the effort going west. Still no sign of her.
I turned around and was heading back to my place when one of my neighbors came down his drive in his pickup and as he got to the end he honked at me, so I pulled up next to him.
“Hey Faulkner, I was just headed over to see if you were home.”
“Hey Jimmy, looks like I saved you a trip. What’s up?”
“Well, I saw some folks stop in front of your place this morning in the middle of the road and a woman got out and went up into your front yard,” he said.
“What were they doing,” I asked.
“I don’t really know, but they were driving a Toyota Prius. It caught my eye because I don’t know of anyone around here that drives a Prius.”
I asked, “was it a man and a woman in the car?”
“No,” he said, “pretty sure it was two women. Mid thirties maybe, both white.”
“My dog is missing,” I told him. “I’m out looking for her.”
“Daisy??” he said. “I’ve been around you and your dogs and they don’t run around loose. Reckon those women took her?”
“I don’t know, but come to think of it my wife said something earlier about a strange car. I gotta go Jimmy, catch you later.”
“Hope you find her Faulkner, if I see anything else I’ll let you know.”
I headed back home at a pretty quick pace on the ATV, and turned up the drive and then pulled into the yard and stopped by the porch where Mrs. Faulkner was sitting. She teared up when she saw I was empty handed.
“I stopped and talked to Jimmy a few minutes ago. Tell me about the strange car you saw,” I said.
She said, “I just got a glimpse of it. I think it was one of those hybrids which is why it caught my eye. It was a bright blue color.”
“Could you see who or how many people were in it?”
She pondered a moment, “no, I didn’t see the people. Do you think they took her?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “I don’t know. We’ve done all we can do for now, at this point she’s only been gone a little over an hour so. She may just be out on an adventure.”
“I don’t think so,” she said with tears in her eyes.
“Okay, let me get in the truck and go see if I can find a blue Toyota Prius roaming around.
I drove my pickup around in ever widening circles around our homestead looking for the possibility of seeing Daisy alive, hurt, or dead, and also keeping an eye out for the blue hybrid. After two hours I gave it up and came home, but Daisy was still not there either.
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