Look What I Found!

At lunchtime yesterday, I arrived home from seeing friends in the village in the midst of a wild gale and heavy rain. The lanes had been flooded and difficult to pass. Rain had been falling in sheets after a night of storm.

Old Whisper Dog reluctantly spent two  minutes in the wet garden and then barked to come in again. As he walked through the door I hear another cry. A high pitched whimpering and a yapping bark from nearby. None of our neighbours` dogs sounded like this......and then it dawned on me. This might be the runaway chihuahua that I had heard about during the morning. It had escaped from a village garden the night before and a frantic search party had failed to find it.

I put on my wellies and went to investigate. I found a soaked, shivering little dog cowering in the hedge bottom, trapped by fence wire. Our front boundary hedge is on the top of a bank, with a fast flowing ditch below it. The only thing to do was to start paddling!

Eventually I freed the dog from his "prison" and hauled him down into my arms. A wetter, more pathetic scrap would have been hard to find. Thankfully he wasn`t a biter and didn`t object to being lifted down the bank unceremoniously. By this time both of my boots were full of water!

It took three warm towels and nearly an hour of drying and cuddling by a hot radiator before he was dry again. Thankfully he didn`t seem ill and was breathing well, so I hope his night out in the storm has done no real damage.

I contacted a friend who had told me about the missing dog and soon the chihuahua was on his way home again. Hopefully he won`t need to visit the vet but his owner was going to watch him carefully ( and only let him out on a lead for now).

Here he is, getting ready to meet one of our cats and non the worse for his adventure!