How Donna Got Her Dog

“Please, God, don’t ask me to become a Catholic nun.”  This was Donna, one of our traveling companions, who was telling us about losing her daughter’s dog.   Both her adult children were out of town on assignments and both had asked her to care for their dogs in the meantime, her son’s black Labrador mix and her daughter’s two Chihuahuas.  Her home was outside the town in which both her children lived when they weren’t working somewhere else. 

After a day or two, the big black dog appeared to be sick.  So Donna loaded him into her truck along with the two Chihuahuas in order to take him to the vet in town   She was just about to start the motor when she wondered if she had turned off the water to the washing machine, which had been giving her trouble.  She left the truck, went into her house, checked the water (she had turned it off), and returned to the truck.  She brought the big black dog to the vet, who gave her some medicine, and then returned with the dog to the truck. 

It was a hot day, so she had left the truck’s windows open so as not to suffocate the Chihuahuas.  But to her horror, when she returned to the truck, she saw that there was only one Chihuahua inside.  Someone must have opened the door and stolen the dog.  Deciding to stay at her son’s home in town, which was near the vet's clinic, she rose early every morning to look for the dog, figuring that who ever stole it would walk it early so as to avoid detection.  She asked everyone in the vicinity about the missing dog, but no one had seen it.  Every day, she checked the animal shelter in hopes that the dog had turned up there. 

She called her daughter to tell her the bad news.  “I’m 35,” her daughter told her, “and I have no children.  Those dogs are my children.”  Donna felt stabbed through the heart.  “Please, God, help me find the dog.  If I find her, I’ll do anything you ask of me.”  Donna wasn’t even sure that God exists, but there are no atheists in foxholes and she was in one now.

After four days of fruitless searching, she had to return home in order to attend the wedding of a good friend’s daughter.  When she turned her house key in the lock, she heard barking.  It was her daughter’s dog.  Four days before, when Donna had returned to the house to check the water, the dog must have followed her into the house and then remained there.  Fortunately, there was plenty of water in her bowl but the dog, of course, was ravenous.  Donna bought more food, the dog ate until it was full, and Donna relaxed.

It was then that she asked God not to require her to enter a convent.  But what did God want her to do?  She figured she would know.  And then she remembered a small dog at the animal shelter.  Unlike the other dogs who would run up to any visitor, wagging their tails, this dog hung back.  If no one claimed her, she would be put down.  Then Donna knew what she had to do.  And, having seen her pitying looks at the feral dogs that haunt the tourist sites, hoping for handouts, it was clear to us what that would be.  She went to the shelter and adopted the dog, which, it turned out, was sick.  After it had been treated, it became as loving and outgoing as one could want.  “And that,” Donna told us, “is how I got my dog.”