Lost Dog

It’s an amazing saga of God’s concern for his creatures. I spent a month in Houston last week. (Yes, that’s an old joke.) I spent a week there. The week began with my having a baught with homesickness that I had not experienced since college. I’ve always battled homesickness when I moved or traveled, but I’m very much a grown man now and it surprised me when I got in my hotel room Sunday evening and felt a crushing wave of it. I couldn’t shake it and had to simply wait it out. I didn’t even eat supper Monday. I just couldn’t.
Well, it ended sharply when my brother-in-law drove my wife, Jodi, to the Woodlands Mall (just north of Houston) Tuesday to stay with me the rest of the week. Yes, I’m spoiled, but in my defense, it was Jodi’s idea and her brother-in-law volunteered to bring her. I was never so happy to see my wife and kids running through the mall to see me. We ate with the kids and with Jodi’s sister and family; then they drove back home and Jodi and I went back into Houston.
I finished my schooling (that is why I was in Houston -- more on that later) and drove home Thursday, anxious to see my kids, sleep in my own bed -- and see our beloved dog, Jello.
Everything crashed down when we opened the house and Jello was not there. He wasn’t anywhere. He was gone. It was horrible. Somehow he had slipped through the gate. He doesn’t like being alone and I think he was looking for us.
We got back in the car and drove around the neighborhoods around our house. Nothing. I stood in the cold and listened to dogs barking. Maybe they were barking at him. I barely ate or slept. I felt like crying all the next day back at work. We called the pound, the paper, the police department. No one had seen him. At least the animal control officer could tell me they hadn’t picked up his body. That gave me comfort, but where was he?
Friday afternoon, Jodi, Savannah and some friends began posting fliers around with our number and situation. A man named Jerry Hodge saw them actually posting the signs. He walked up and read the sign, then called me when he got home. He said he saw a woman stop her car and pick up a small dog right in front of our house earlier in the week. (My kids had come over and played with Jello Wednesday and he was last seen at 4:30 that afternoon.) Apparently, Jello slipped out and tried to follow them when they left. He was running up the road when the lady picked him up and Jerry saw her. Jerry thought it looked suspicious and followed her home. He even got her license plate number. He lives down the same country road as the lady who picked him up.
So Friday about 4:50, he called to tell me he had seen the flier and wondered if that could have been our pooch. Now, I was beginning to feel very hopeful. We had a good lead. I knew it was Jello. I called the police and gave them the license number. The officer reminded me that he couldn’t enter a house to get the dog -- and that if they denied having him there was nothing he could do without a warrant. Not only that, but the house was in the county so he had to pass the case to the Sheriff‘s office. This was looking like it might be tricky getting him back.
Jodi called our constable and he was checking into helping us. While I was talking to him, Jerry’s wife, Melissa, called and told me she had seen Jello Thursday running beside their road. My daughter and I jumped in the car and drove straight to that road. I saw Jello cross the road up ahead of us. I pulled up and called him. He had lost a couple of pounds, but he was alive and okay. I guess he had escaped from the woman who picked him up. We found him a mile and a half from our home, 24 hours after we got home from Houston and 48 hours after he crawled through our fence.
We praised God that our family was finally all home together again. Then we bought a gift certificate to a popular local restaurant and took it to the Hodges.
Some lessons from this? First, I think it proves that God really is watching out for us and cares about things that matter to us. He allows us to suffer for a time, but works things out in the end. That suffering makes us stronger and prioritizes us. It keeps us from getting so upset about little things that occur every day.
There’s another lesson, too. Sometimes, we get anxious about what God is doing in our lives and give up waiting for him. So, we take matters into our own hands. Like Jello, we only make matters worse when we do this. We upset God and ourselves. Jello may have spent two nights out in the cold because he didn’t wait one more day in our warm house.
Finally, I see a good message here about our response. We didn’t sit around and wait to see if Jello would come back. We did everything we knew to get him and ultimately went to get him where he was. I think God does this, too. When we “go prodigal” on him, he wants to bring us back. The father in that story saw his son a long way off and went out to meet him. The man who lost his sheep in Luke 15 went searching for it, as did the lady who lost the coin. I think God does that too.