Battle

Fighting pheasants!

Probably the worst day in this year for me but  ...... who knows?

All week I have been rung in the early hours with parents care alarm buttons going off and dealing with it but today beat all the others into a cocked hat.

Alarms went off, phone calls with numerous people, Poppy got outside the gates on our lane and was picked up by a caring lady who bundled her into her car but honestly should have just rung the doorbell, and taken to vets 9 miles away. A couple of hours of frantic searching proved useless. Sorted in the end.

Dad was ambulanced into Pinderfields Hospital early in the morning, Mum had no idea what was going on and I was fielding calls from everyone to the point I honestly had to take myself out of the house to see the Cotswolds in the setting sun.

Getting home more calls from everyone involved and on a Friday night decided to cancel our arrangements and shoot up to Yorkshire and brave the traffic. Worse is to come ....

We arrived and unpacked the car, the dogs sniffed around - they know this house and garden and have done for fourteen years. Chatted to Mum whilst Hubs watched Telly after a hideous drive up the M1 and let the dogs out into the garden for a last wee. Five minutes later only Tilly came back. Poppy yet again ........

She had disappeared off the planet. We searched in the cold and dark for 5 hours, driving, walking, calling, whistling. It was very cold and dark and in the end called it a day till dawn when we could see across the fields. Same scenario but to no avail and we have had no sleep at this point.

I rang our vets to have my mobile number put on the microchip as our home number was going to be useless then did an online microchip update then called the dog warden whilst Hubs did a few chores in town. 

We both nailed it at the almost the same time: the dog warden rang me saying she had good news and bad news. Now what would you have thought to that? I thought the worst obviously!

A westie had been found down in Dewsbury but they hadn't verified the chip.

Meanwhile , Hubs down in town had randomly passed a large vets and thought there was no harm in trying to see if a westie  had been handed in with the idea of getting her really on their database. 'Oh you mean Poppy!' he said! 

Apparently she had got out of Mum's garden and followed someone home not very far really ... yards down the lane. They had taken her in then taken her to the vets in the morning. 

If the police were at any point going to be on a stake out we would have looked the most suspicious and obvious pair of villains; curb crawling, binoculars scouring the gardens, repeated  many many repeated  visits in one night! Nothing suspicious in the boot then, just a suitcase with getaway clothes ....