Razorback Britt

We had a very sad and tragic occurrence in our family- our dog Pippin went missing.

One Wednesday evening, I got home late (in choir/praise team practice late), and mom and Remi were at home. They had played with Pip and gotten Remi in bed. I got home and let him out and went to change clothes. When I came back, he was NOWHERE to be found. I searched for him for hours with our neighbor (Tyler was out on a call), and we found no trace. We couldn’t hear him (he’s a yapper….we usually hear him if he wanders…and he never wanders far).

I forced myself to go to bed at midnight after searching for hours. It was very very very cold – like in the 20s. I hoped he was hunkered down somewhere, and when Tyler got home at 2:30 a.m., he got on the 4 wheeler and searched our pasture.

The next morning, me, mom and Nancy searched some more- looking in all the neighbor pastures. I posted his picture EVERYWHERE, called all the local vet offices and police departments. No leads.

We think one of two things happened. Either he wandered to the road and at that exact moment (like in the five minutes he was outside alone), someone drove by and picked him up thinking he was homeless. Or an animal got him. I truly don’t believe he ran off. It just wasn’t his nature.

I did go searching through our pasture again because it was muddy and I was making sure he wasn’t in a big puddle or something. I did see coyote tracks in the corner of our pasture. I pray he’s in some lady’s lap being pampered, or that if he’s gone he didn’t suffer.

We waited a day to tell Remi. We were trying to locate him before we broke her heart. Thank goodness, she didn’t notice him missing that morning. But that afternoon we told her all we knew- that he was there, and then he wasn’t.

She was so sad. He’s been her best buddy her whole life. She sprung into action- making missing dog posters to pass out at school. She was trying to organize a search party, too, but we told her we really thought we had looked everywhere we could.

Goodness, we miss him. I partly feel guilty, even though letting him out alone is something we did daily. He never wandered or ran off. I have grieved him. Our house is so sad and quiet. I keep thinking I need to let a dog out during the day. Taking down the Christmas tree with the dog’s ornaments was VERY sad.

We are looking for a new dog. Not a replacement, but I think our hearts need a pup around. Hopefully we can find one half as great as Mikey and Pippin were. They were amazing dogs.