On Valentine’s Day, I planned to bring Greta in to the vet for her annual dental cleaning. Greta loves going for car rides, so taking her in is usually not an issue – she doesn’t figure out where we are until we actually get in the exam room. I also wanted to get her eye drops refilled and copies of her records before we leave so I’m all set to transfer her to a new vet in New Hampshire.

When we got to the vet, Mister handed the leash over to me. I’m Greta’s chosen human, and he didn’t want to be seen as the “bad guy” by leading her in to the vet’s office. We stopped at Pee Corner, where Greta always has to go before we go into the office, and then something happened – she got too skittish about something, traffic maybe – and she bolted. I didn’t have a very good grip on her leash and wasn’t able to hold on, and she kept running. I didn’t make things any better, because I screamed her name which probably made her think she was in trouble. Two well-meaning strangers were in the parking lot at the same time, and they started yelling and chasing her as well. Greta didn’t even look back.

The image that keeps flashing in my mind is watching Greta run towards the street – a typical main road in Vegas, with 3 lanes in each direction.

I went back to my car and started driving. I found Mister down the block. He had lost sight of her, so he got in the car and we drove around all the parking lots, behind strip malls, and down the side streets looking for her, asking people if they had seen her. Eventually we realized that we probably wouldn’t find her, so I drove back to the vet.

Since Greta has her ID tag with her name and both our phone numbers, her rabies tag with the vet’s phone number, is microchipped, and had her harness on and leash trailing behind her, I was hopeful that if she was found, we’d get her back. I let the vet know, they put flyers up in both their waiting rooms and let the doctors know, and we left. We drove around a little bit more after that but didn’t see her, so we went home to continue packing.

I really lost it when we got home. It’s one thing to drive around without her, because I do that a lot, but being at home without her is when the emptiness hit, along with the realization that I might never see my beloved puppy girl again.

About an hour after we got home, Mister’s phone rang. It was a local number, but not one we recognized, and I gave the phone to Mister. I wasn’t confident that my hands would work properly when trying to answer the phone, and I wasn’t confident in my ability to keep it together long enough to get any information from the caller. But I did overhear the voice on the other line.

“Did you lose a dog?”

As soon as I heard that, my shoes were on, sunglasses on, and keys were in my hand. Mister was writing down directions, and I was ready to jump in the car and go. But Mister, great wonderful man that he is, got directions, calmly finished the call, and we were on our way.

The man who found Greta was out walking his dog, and I guess Greta was worn out because she stopped long enough for the kind man to find her and grab her leash. I don’t know who was happier – us to see Greta or Greta to see us. But we got her back! She went pretty far, too, about 1.5 miles when I mapped it out:

We did take Greta to the vet to get checked out after her little adventure, but decided to postpone the dental cleaning. She checked out just fine, and we’re watching for illness because we don’t know if she decided to relieve her thirst in a contaminated puddle. Everyone at the vet’s office was happy to see that we got Greta back, but not as happy as we were.

This whole adventure was a bit of a wake-up call for me. Greta was a puppy mill rescue, so no matter how much love we give her, she will always be prone to running when she gets scared. I will have to be extra, super-duper careful when we stop during our long drive to New Hampshire. I will have to make sure her leash is securely wrapped around my wrist AND that I have a good grip on it. If this sort of thing were to happen while we were on the road, the chances of us never seeing her again are a heck of a lot higher. Also, when we change our phone numbers, the FIRST thing I am going to do is get a new ID tag for Greta. She’s just too important to us for me to not do that.

This was not the way I wanted to spend Valentine’s Day, but I am so glad there was a positive outcome. I was inconsolable at the thought of never seeing Greta again, but even more important, I know that Mister is my rock and that I can depend on him to be strong for us when I can’t.

Over the weekend, we had a friend visit from out of town. Greta is still very skittish around strangers, especially in our home, but she was really good for this one.

Saturday morning, after I finally woke up, I ventured downstairs, where our guest was sitting on the couch reading. She was sitting where I usually sit, so I sat down where Mister usually sits. Greta came downstairs just after I sat down, and ran around the coffee table, and jumped in our guest’s lap. Greta was confused because I was not sitting where I normally sit, so she assumed the figure sitting in my spot was her human.

Once Greta jumped up, she looked over to me and realized that she was not in my lap. She looked at our guest, and her eyes got really wide as she came to the realization that she jumped into the lap of a total stranger. Then she scrambled up the stairs as fast as she could. She was not at all pleased about this mean trick we played on her.

Greta will have to get socialized with humans a lot better than she is now, and there will be plenty of opportunity for that once we get back to New Hampshire. In the meantime, it’s fun to watch her open up more to different people.

Even after a full year of having Greta, it’s still all the little things about her that amaze me and make me smile on a daily basis. I mentioned that she has her quirks, but they’re not all related to her previous traumas.

She definitely loves to watch Mister eat and even though I’m undoubtedly her favorite human, if he and I are eating at the same time she will sit by him until she’s satisfied that there’s not a morsel left that she might be able to capture. And she’s already proven that she’ll do anything for a chance to eat human food.

Last week, after I’d been asleep for about an hour, I heard Greta jump off the bed so I woke up. At first I tried to get her to jump back in bed, but she wasn’t having it. She just kept staring at the door. I figured she’d want to go potty so I opened the bedroom door. Instead of running downstairs, Greta rushed into the office – the next room over – to find Mister eating an ice cream novelty. Apparently she heard him unwrapping it and decided that she had to get herself some human food. I just said, “Give me a freaking break” and went back to bed, but Mister told me that she started at him while he ate his snack, went outside, then came back upstairs and jumped back into bed with me. All I know is that she was curled up in bed next to me when my alarm went off way too early.

I also love how Greta greets me when I come home from work, Saturday shopping, or taking the trash out. Have you ever seen those videos showing soldiers coming home after many months and their dogs going absolutely berserk with excitement? That’s Greta every single time I come home. She starts barking as soon as she hears the garage door open, and I walk into the house to see her wiggling her butt in the air. As I walk further into the house, she starts running in circles – around me, around the coffee table, up the stairs and down again, etc. as we make our way to the back door. When we got Greta, she’d get excitement incontinence so taking her outside upon arriving home became a ritual.

After letting Greta get her greet on, we go back inside. I walk through the human-sized opening, while Greta rockets through the doggie door and up the stairs. Then she sits at the top of the stairs waiting for me to come up. Sometimes I don’t go upstairs right away, and if she hears me sit on the sofa she’ll come running back down the stairs to tackle me where I sit. If I do go upstairs, I see her on the top step, wiggling her butt in the air, jumping in circles. She’s silly like that.

Sometimes I find dog hairs on my shirt when I’m at work. This always makes me smile because I got doggie hugs before I left.

When I get out Greta’s harness, it’s a signal to her that we’re going out. She doesn’t care if it’s a walk in the park or a visit to the vet, she’s excited because it means that when I leave the house, she gets to come with me. Sometimes it’s nearly impossible to put the harness on because she’s pawing at it with frantic excitement.

I used positive reinforcement when trying to housebreak Greta, so even though we have the doggie door and I don’t have to accompany her on her bathroom breaks, she still comes running to me when she comes in the house, looking for praise.

I love that Greta is always happy to see me. It’s pretty much impossible to be sad or upset when I’ve got that cute doggie butt wagging in the air. It was Mister’s idea to get a dog, and I’m sure glad we did. There’s nothing like a pup who loves you.