Ruby's Runaway Recap

Last weekend was our town's annual celebration, Farley Fest.  Each year, the town hosts an arts and crafts fair, a car show, windmill tours, a concert, and a fireworks show, among other events.  Previously, the fireworks and concert were held on the same night, but last year, they switched the fireworks to the night before the concert. 

Lydia was just a month and a half old last year at Farley Fest.  I remember standing in our dining room, holding her while she cried, and being sad that the first fireworks she was seeing in her lifetime were hampered by her crying.  AND there were 9,000,000 mosquitoes!  UGH!

Anyhow...... flash forward to this year.  In the days leading up to Farley Fest this year, the people who shoot the fireworks kept doing test shots.  They did them like every half hour on Friday.  It was kind of a pain, because it made our dog kind of nervous.  Friday night came and it was a beautiful night -- very little wind, not too hot, not too cold, and a clear enough sky to see the fireworks shoot up.  Tyler and I decided to start a fire in our fire pit and by the time it was going, another test shot had gone up.  It woke Lydia up.  Instead of fighting to get her back to sleep, I brought her outside, thinking she could go to bed a little later than normal.  After all, it is summer, the fireworks would be loud, and we could sleep in the next morning if need be.  We enjoyed sitting by the fire (Lydia was entranced... I don't think she's ever seen anything bigger than a candle flame!) for a while and then realized that the fireworks would soon be starting.  I had handed Lydia over to Tyler so she could sit on his lap for a while and he handed her back just as the fireworks were starting, so he could hold on to Ruby's collar.  At one point while watching the fire, I said "Let's just keep Ruby out with us and see how she does with the fireworks." 

The next account is exactly how about 3 minutes of our lives went:

Fireworks start.
Lydie cries.
Tyler gets up and says "Ruby. Ruby.  RUBY." 
Tyler buzzes her shock collar. 
Tyler walks around our house looking for her.
I finally realize he's not joking and he can't find Ruby.
Lydie and I get up and start looking.
Ruby cannot be found.
Tyler presses Ruby's shock collar one more time and says "She's out of range of the collar to work." 
O.M.G.

So, I race inside to call Home Again, the company that we have Ruby micro-chipped through.  We thought it was a tracking system.  When I called, the woman informed me "It's not a GPS, Ma'am.  Your calling us will allow us to make a poster that will be delivered to all the shelters, rescues, veterinary offices, etc. in your area. The poster will have Ruby's information and a picture of her on it."  A POSTER!?!?! HELLO! I could have done that myself! Whatever. So I say "okay," hang up, and head outside to keep looking.  Tyler took Lydia with him in the car to drive around and look for Ruby, I stayed close to home in case she came back and walked around our neighborhood on foot.  Mind you, by this time, it's like 11:00 p.m. and pitch dark.

Time out for me to describe our area:  We live on THEE northernmost street in our town.  One house north of us is sided on the north side by a farm with lots of trees.  Beyond that, it's out in the country.  OY!  And again, pitch black, People.  

Okay, so I'm out looking and looking for Ruby, calling her name, and trying to find her with a flashlight.  Most of our neighbors were out (which was a good thing, as they could say "yay" or "nay" to having seen Ruby).  Most of the town was out too at the fireworks.... the problem with that is they were all in the park south of our house watching the fireworks that were shot off from across the lake we live on.  Ruby was definitely trying to get AWAY from the noise, so going south into all of the people where she may have been found seemed like an impossibility!  Before leaving home, I called our radio station to have them announce at the fireworks that Ruby was missing.  Then I realized that the phone number on her collar is definitely our OLD phone number that was in service a year ago... we got a new phone number last November to save money through our provider... OH NO!  I also called our local police station/sheriff's office to alert them of Ruby's disappearance and put a message on my facebook that she was missing.

So, I finally call Tyler and ask if he's had any luck. No luck.  He was coming home.  All the while of looking for Ruby, I realized that this was, in fact, my fault.  I had told Tyler to keep her outside.  She took off like a bolt of lightning when she left and we knew she had to be a long way from home.  It made me so sad to think of our poor puppy.... barely two years old....alone at night....scared from the noise... was she hurt?.... was she killed?.....was she trying to get home and couldn't find her way?.... what if she was hurt, but dying slowly, all by herself, scared in a big, dark night... the guilt of all of this about pushed me over the edge.  It was like our first baby had been ripped away from us and she was all alone. And it was my. fault.

I decided then and there that I would stay out all night waiting for her to come back.  Tyler finally convinced me to come inside, but it was the longest, sleepless night I've ever had.  I kept thinking I was hearing Ruby scratching at our front door. Or crying. Or barking.  I was SO SO SO sad!  And Tyler was sad too.... he's spent so much time training Ruby to hunt, teaching her to stay in our yard (which she does faithfully!), and playing with her throwing the retriever in the lake behind our house.  I knew it was breaking his heart that she was gone.  We each kept getting up throughout the night to see if Ruby was back or not. She never was.

By 6:30 Saturday morning, my  mom sent me an e-mail telling me to call her ASAP.  When I called her, she was very upset that Ruby hadn't come back yet and that I hadn't called Friday night to have them come help look for her.  Really, there probably wasn't anything to be done Friday night, as Ruby is a speed racer and could have been to Canada by the time we even hopped in our car.  My mom told me that she, my dad, my brother, and my grandma were coming to help find Ruby. She also told me that she was going to call their town's radio stations, as they project to our town and all the surrounding areas.  Someone was bound to find her.

Bound to find her.... all night long, I kept thinking those horrible thoughts about her being lost, hurt, killed, etc., but I also had hope that someone would find her.  I was praying someone would find her.  And alive, not dead. 

As I hung up from talking with my mom, I realized I had new voice mail messages.  I listened to one: "Um. Yeah. I just seen [sic] (I would never use grammar like that) your dog four miles north on the highway."  Awesome.  Thanks for the really detailed message, Lady. BUT that meant someone had seen her alive!  Then I listened to the second message:  "Hi. My name is Jerid.  I am at mile marker 179, north of town, on the highway.  I can see your dog, but she won't come to me.  She seems scared.  Call me back when you can."  HALLELUJAH!!  I called him back and we RACED north of town to find her.  When we got to where the man was, he said "She saw me, looked back, and took off running east. I'll go back to the northern dirt road from here, you go to the southern dirt road from here and we'll cut her off."  So we did that, but our dirt road never came.  We were almost back into town when Jerid called back and said "She's headed back towards the highway."  We turned around and raced BACK out of town.  We came up over a hill, saw Jerid's car coming towards us, and RUBY BARRELING down the highway!!!!  She saw our car and came RUNNING!!! I jumped out of the car, ran over to her, and she came right to me!  She was wet.  She was dirty.  She was tired. Hungry. Thirsty.  BUT HOME!!!!

She ended up being four miles north of home.  We'll never know how far she went throughout the night, though. 

I think next year she'll stay inside for fireworks.... Oh, Ruby.....