Have you seen a brown dog?

You wouldn’t think I’d spent the whole morning driving around looking for this skinny, brown dog, shouting “Luka! Luka! Luka!” at 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning. You wouldn’t think that at 38 lbs. she would have it in her skinny legs to bound over a six foot fence, run 1.5 miles out, say hello to a nice couple having coffee on their front porch, then sprint 1.5 miles back in less than 20 minutes, but she did.

Then she let my husband catch her with a wad of spam. This man is a GENIUS.

While driving in search of her I met:

A grouchy cyclist whose response to me was “I’m racing!” After retrieving my lower jaw from the pavement (“Share the Road”, my eye) I gave his his mini, helmet-affixed, rear view mirror the middle-finger salute. Live Strong, jerky!

The nice couple having coffee who were very helpful and kind. I love it when people say, “She went that-away!” and then make the time to take down your phone number in case the dog comes back.

A dude lurking, kind of hunched down in his pickup in his own driveway who wanted to know my dog’s weight, precisely.

A nice man who let me flag him down so that I could rescue a traveling box turtle. He very gently told me I shouldn’t be in the middle of the road. And while we were both stopped in the middle of the road, we chatted about the recent tragedy of a grandfather and his little granddaughter who were killed moving a turtle in the middle of these very roads.

A runner of military bearing who had time to tell me he had not seen my brown dog and good luck finding her. My money is on him for winning any race, not grouchy cycling dude.

Two little old ladies coming back from church in their happy Prius who wished me luck and probably said a prayer to St. Anthony for my incredibly wayward dog.

And finally, grouchy cycling dude AGAIN who I attempted to stop AGAIN. Hey, one guy in spandex looks exactly like any other guy in spandex, even with a giant, gray mustache.

“NO!” he shouted. I think he was feeling embarrassed for not having gotten very far since I saw him 50 minutes earlier. Maybe he took a poopy break in the woods? Hope the leaves he used looked like mittens.

When I got back home Luka had the audacity to bark at me from the front window. She has no idea how lucky she is. During my drive I had decided the dog ownership thing has got to be a two-way street: she’s got to want to stay or at least come back when she bolts after an imaginary flying squirrel, or there isn’t much I can do but call her name and put up signs.