So let’s laugh more!

Two nights ago I lost my dog.

I unleashed Skoshi by my car after a walk, turned away from him to pour him some water, turned back and he was gone!

Now, it usually takes me at least 10 minutes to get this 15 ½ year old dog up off the rug, walking toward the door, through the garage and into the car. Skoshi walks so slowly, stops so frequently, I sometimes have to tug him along with his leash. Yet, in the split second I turned my back, he disappeared!

I mean gone completely.

I ran around a large, dark, parking lot calling for him. (Skoshi is deaf, and even when he could hear, he had ‘selective hearing’.) I searched behind dark, smelly dumpsters; I looked behind bushes. I ran up the ramp from the parking lot and shuddered at the busy street. Could he really have scampered into the fast traffic in that short time?

My first husband helped me. He searched everywhere too.

I ran over and asked some employees of a restaurant, trying to take a peaceful break in the cool night air, if they had seen my dog.

No luck.

I ran all around the perimeter again, looking behind barricades, poking bushes when at last I heard the call every searcher wants to hear: “I found him.”

Someone working in the street level Pizza Parlor brought Skoshi down the stairs to the parking lot.

It turns out a door was propped open to the Pizza Parlor. My first husband had looked in the door, but saw it had a steep flight of stairs. Knowing that every night I practically had to lift my old dog’s tail end up to help him up the stairs, my first husband never thought that Skoshi would have climbed such a long flight of stairs.

Apparently the smell of fresh pizza was too enticing to resist.

My dog forgot he was old and bounded up the stairs in the hopes of tasting some good food.

If only there had been a toddler up there, biting into a slice. Skoshi knows they are easy prey- he has snatched an occasional piece out of their hands and gobbled it down. (Luckily his two victims had had dogs at home. Neither was alarmed, they just demanded a fresh piece for themselves.)

Skoshi looked at us quizzically like ‘what’s the big deal? Haven’t I seen you go out for pizza?’ I threw my arms around Skoshi’s soft furry head and just laughed. It is far superior to crying!

We never found out if Skoshi actually ate some. Maybe a cook gave him a scrap. I know nothing, not old age, or arthritis will ever stop him from hoping and trying for some good Italian food.

And I will ever be grateful for the laughter he has brought me.

1. © Jane F. Collen  September 10, 2021

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