Gone

As if my weekend could stand to get any worse. After Neil hurt his foot Saturday and we spent three hours in the emergency room and he had to get crutches and be in pain and my heart ached for him, on Sunday, Barbie got out of my parents' backyard and got scared and bit my dad really hard when he tried to catch her and then she ran away.

I searched in the open space behind my parents' house for five hours Sunday. I was wearing sandals and my feet became coated in stickers and thorns. My skin got burnt in the sun. My voice went hoarse from calling "Barbie" over and over and over again. We hung up signs, we knocked on doors. We talked to every person we saw. Nobody had seen her or heard her. None of the walkers with large dogs had noticed their dogs sniffing or barking. She was gone.

Yesterday, we went back and searched some more. Nothing. We have an ad in the paper. My dad has been to the pound. He's called animal control. He's put posters all over the neighborhood. Nothing.

My heart is broken. Wiley keeps looking for his sister and he's not eating. Neil is not only hobbling around on his hurt foot, but I think he is even sadder than he's letting on. I miss Barbie. I miss her sense of humor, her enthusiasm, her affection, the way she licked my face like crazy every morning when I woke up and when I moved her away from my face, she licked Neil's instead. I don't know how to make Wiley happy again and I feel terrible that he is at home alone right now while I am at work.

I keep hoping that my phone will ring and someone will tell me they found her and she's fine and that I can come pick her up. But nobody has called. I keep hoping she'll show up in my parents' garage and drink the water and eat the food we put out for her... but the food is still there and the water bowl is full.