And...exhale

“Hello?”

“Hi Hope,” “Hi Browning,”

“How are you?”

“Uh, pretty good…”

“We found her,”

“OhmyGod, OhmyGod, OHMYGOD!”

And why did you ask when you knew with that piece of information the answer could be nothing less than perfect?

Wednesday night a man called Georgia saying he had seen Sadie on the edge of the George Washington Parkway. Browning and Georgia went and looked for her for 2 hours. When they couldn’t find her they came home, called me and said they’d go back out when it was light. At 4:30 on Thursday morning, Summer and Browning’s neighbor knocked on their door. When Browning opened it, there was Sadie – she had found her way back and come in with the neighbor and her dog.

People always say you don’t know what you have until you lose it but I always knew I loved her a lot. I always knew I’d be crushed if she disappeared or got hurt. But maybe what I didn’t realize was how much fun it was to have her around. How much I’ve come to appreciate the fact that she barks when someone pulls into the driveway or knocks on the door. I used to admonish her to stop but now, nah, life’s too short, and she can bark her ass off.