Vet ....

When I took this picture this afternoon it was on our return from his vet visit.  He had to go to a different vet for a scan and some bloods to check his heart function.  All seems to be well pending the blood test results.  He was so nervous and I waited an hour for him to be finished.  When we got home he collapsed into his bed and who could blame him.  He was pretty docile the rest of the afternoon and we didn't push him to go out walking as he dug his heels in when we took him yesterday, preferring a lead walk to running around in the woods.  

This evening my eldest daughter let him out before she was about to go home, she wanted to say goodbye to him a little while later and we realised that he hadn't barked to come in ..... and that there was no sign of him in the garden.  This was getting on for 7 pm.  I was cross because he sometimes does this, racing out into the depths of the garden to look for cats as soon as it gets dark!  Anyway, I put a coat and boots on and got a torch.  No sign in any corner of the garden, however I discovered a small tunnel under one corner of the fence and immediately realised that he had escaped.  Called and whistled but couldn't hear the jingle of his collar anywhere.  Luckily for us my middle daughter with Lucy lives in the cul de sac behind and he would have come out close to her house  which is the end one .  She was in her pj's but donned her boots and also left to look for him.    She found him sniffing about after a few minutes and managed to get him.  He was delighted to see her.   During this time Alex had taken her car to look around the streets and my husband had walked with his lead and a torch through the alley way that leads to the back road and within a few minutes they were reunited.  He scuttled back in and ate his supper and is now resting up ......  Lucy's mum sent the camera recordings from her front door and we can see him strolling around sniffing here and there, his first stop was at her door!   We also saw several cars driving by and so he was lucky not to have tried to cross the road.  I was worried that he might have taken himself to the park in which case it would be very difficult to find him.