Cowie the Dog

A dog named Cowie takes her owners on an adventure.

Jorge and Leigh were driving back from the store or something and they had to stop suddenly because of a bunch of puppies crossing the road. They counted seven, and then a little runt, so eight.

They were all black, obviously mutts, but so cute. They were also in danger of getting run over.

Jorge and Leigh decided they would take them all home.

They opened the trunk of their car and put them in one by one. Leigh held on to the runt in the front seat with her.

Well, the next few days were very interesting. Feeding eight puppies that all look the same is more difficult than you imagine. It’s hard to tell which one has eaten, and which one is the bully and which one is getting pushed out of the way.

Well, after cleaning up a couple days of puppy poo all over the house, and trying to sleep with eight puppies yapping all night, Leigh and Jorge decided to take them to a shelter.

The next morning, they took seven of the eight puppies to the local shelter. They took a couple bags of puppy food, and made sure that the shelter was going to try to find homes for them. The girl at the counter convinced them they would be taken care of.

Jorge and Leigh went back home and played with the one they kept. It was the runt. They named her Cowie. They loved her and squeezed her and fed her and walked her and played with her. She was the cutest ever, so tiny and soft. Oh, and her puppy breath was the best.

They had many adventures with Cowie. They almost lost her in a raging river, she got diarrhea from eating too many June bugs, she was forced to share her home with a large Irish Wolfhound, she jumped many fences and once was secretly filmed peeing in the middle of the living room and then licking it. Nasty.

Well, there was one adventure that really tops them all.

One day, there was a huge thunderstorm. Cowie did not like thunder. In fact, it really freaked her out.

Well, Jorge had just come back from a trip and was recounting to Leigh, and they left Cowie and their other dog Glori out in the back yard. The thunder was raging, but they did not think to let the dogs in.

It was a fairly fast moving storm, and was out of the area before Jorge thought to greet the dogs after his trip away from home.

He opened the back door and called out to them.

“Cowie! Glori!”

Glori came running and almost ran inside.

“No, girl,” said Jorge. “Your all wet. Stay outside. Where’s Cowie?”

Jorge stepped outside into the covered patio.

“Cowie!” he called out again.

He decided to check one side of the house where he has found her before, but she’s not there. He then goes to the other side of the house, toward the wooden gate. There’s a large hole torn out between a few slats of wood.

He immediately runs into the house.

“Leigh,” he called out. “Cowie’s out. She tore down some of the gate and got out.”

Leigh came running into the living room from the bedroom.

“Oh, no!” she said. “The storm!”

“I’ll go out front,” he said to her. “Maybe she hasn’t gone far.”

He went out the front door, and out onto the driveway, then out into the street.

“Cowie!” he yelled. “Cowie!”

She wasn’t anywhere.

He ran back inside.

“She’s not around!” he said. “Let’s get in the car and drive around.”

“She can’t have gone too far,” said Leigh slipping on her shoes.

They got in the car, rolled down the windows and began driving slowly up the street, calling out every few seconds.

“Cowie!”

“Cowie!”

They did this up and down the street for at least an hour. They had gone as far up the street in every direction, and even went around a few blocks.

Where did she go?

“Well,” said Leigh. “Let’s go home. You know how sometimes she gets out and then ends up back home.”

Well, Cowie wasn’t back home.

Jorge went to the gate to see how she had gotten out and found Cowie’s purple collar. He ran it inside to show Leigh.

“She must have yanked it off maybe pulling her head back in or something,” he said to her.

“Oh, no, Jorge!” said Leigh. “That collar is the only way anyone will be able to reach us if they find her.” The collar had their address and phone number engraved on a little metal tag.

They prayed that God would bring her back home. As the night got later and Cowie hadn’t come home, they started making plans.

The next morning, they had signs taped to the garage, and printouts and a stapler in hand, they went out and posted “Lost Dog” posters all over the place.

Jorge had to go to work, so he left. Leigh stayed home and worried.

Jorge decided to attach Cowie’s purple collar to his backpack as a memorial of sorts. This turned out to be more of a bother than he thought, because of the way the tags rattled and clinked. Jorge would arrive home from work, and Leigh would hear the clinking tags and think Cowie was back, and then become sad when it wasn’t Cowie.

Jorge told one of his co-workers about Cowie, and how she had left her collar behind. His co-worker told Jorge that he should probably start checking the city pound.

Jorge called Leigh to see if Cowie had returned, but she hadn’t.

He told her about the pound, and that he was going there at lunchtime.

The information Jorge got at the pound was not good at all. Apparently, the pound destroys animals after two days of keeping. That means: they get stored in building “A” on day one, get moved to building “B” on day two, then are moved to building “C” on the third morning, but just until there’s room in building “D”. Building “D” was not for storage or holding. Jorge wasn’t allowed in building “D”. He could see it, and he could hear the dogs barking inside, but he couldn’t go in it.

This meant Jorge had to go to the pound every other day at lunchtime to see if Cowie had been captured. This was not fun. The dogs were all so cute. Most didn’t have collars on, but some did. All of them wanted Jorge to get them out of there. He cried a little every time he was at the pound.

One day, he even saw a dog that looked just like Cowie, but when he approached the dog, it started barking like crazy.

“You’re not Cowie,” said Jorge. The crazy aggressive dogs, like this one, were put directly into building “C”.

One day, Jorge was walking back to the parking lot after checking building “C”. Suddenly, he found himself unknowingly walking right next to building “D”. He always walked around the other side of the complex, just to avoid this very thing. The barking was so loud and crazy. Jorge picked up his pace.

“No, no, no!” he was mumbling, trying to reach the door to the lobby.

But it was too late. Suddenly, the barking stopped. This was not a good day. This weighed heavy on Jorge’s heart.

When he got home, he was determined to find Cowie. He was sure she was out there. It had been a week.

Jorge and Leigh took their efforts further out. They went around the block to businesses, including a frozen yogurt shop and a Subway sandwich place. Surprisingly, a couple of the sandwich builders in the Subway said they had give Cowie some cold cuts. Their description matched Cowie exactly: very friendly, wags her whole bottom, the whole bit.

Jorge and Leigh were more excited than ever.

When they got home, there was a message on the answering machine. Someone had spotted Cowie. They got back in the car and drove there.

On the way there, they kept thinking that it was too far. It wasn’t on the other side of town, just a few blocks away, but just too far.

Well, they met a lady who had at least fifteen cats. She was working on her garden when they arrived. Her front yard was cluttered with empty flowerpots, lawn furniture, wind chimes and garden gnomes. She came out from behind the garage.

She turned out to be as eccentric as her front yard. They wanted to be polite, so they waited patiently until there was a pause in her stories. Finally, Jorge was able to ask about the dog.

“Well,” she said. “Just wait a minute.” And she looked down the street. Jorge and Leigh took her cue and looked down the street as well. They were all quiet for a moment.

Suddenly, a shaggy black dog bolted out from behind a fence down the street. The dog was running full pelt, and he ran right past the three people without slowing down.

This was not Cowie.

“That’s not her,” said Leigh.

“Well,” said the lady, “do you want a dog? This one’s been running around the block all week.”

“No, thank you,” they both said to her.

As they started for their car, waving goodbye and saying thanks, she stopped them.

“Listen,” she said. “You both seem like a sweet couple. Why don’t you give me a stack of your flyers and I can give them out on my walks around the neighborhood. I try to walk at least every couple of days, and I take a different route every day.”

Well, Jorge and Leigh were delighted. They gave her a stack of flyers and went home, hugging her a few times.

Right as they got into their car to leave, the shaggy dog ran past them again.

Another week went by. Each day Jorge and Leigh’s hope dwindled. Every evening, they would go outside and howl with Glori. They hugged Glori quite a bit.

One day, as Jorge was at work getting ready to go to the pound, he got a phone call.

“We think we’ve found your dog,” she said. The description fit. Jorge decided he’d go there instead of the pound.

On the way there, Jorge saw a bunch of flyers posted in places where he had not posted. That lady had really done it. He was feeling good about this. It had been three weeks.

He arrived at the place and the woman who had called Jorge explained everything.

“Well,” she said. “The couple that lives there are a strange couple. They don’t ever leave the house, at least not during the day. Their trash consists of empty cases of soda and pizza boxes. Well, one day, about three weeks ago, they came home with a dog they said they had picked up over by the Subway.”

“The Subway,” said Jorge excitedly. “That’s right by our house, and she was seen there three weeks ago.”

“Yeah, well,” she continued. “It’s probably her.”

“Have you seen the dog since then?” asked Jorge.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “We see her almost every day. The only time I see the woman, is when she checks the mail, and whenever she checks the mail, your dog escapes and runs across the street to the neighbor’s house where there’s usually a bunch of kids. She loves kids. She lets us pet her, and is the sweetest little dog.”

“OK,” said Jorge. “I’m gonna go knock on the door.”

“They won’t answer the door,” she called out to him, but Jorge was determined.

Jorge walked across the street, and up to the front door. He knocked on the door and rang the doorbell. He listened carefully through the door and could hear a television inside.

Then, he heard the most exciting sound he had ever heard. It was a whimper coming from just inside the door.

Jorge knocked again. He put his face up to the tall window just to the right of the door and tried to peer in. There was a sheer curtain in front of the window, but he could barely make out a rug and some furniture.

He crouched down to the bottom of the window, and there she was. It was Cowie all right.

“Cowie!” Jorge called out.

Cowie put her nose to the window and was whimpering and yelping and scratching at the door.

Jorge rang the doorbell and pounded on the door.

The neighbor was right, no one answered the door.

Jorge called Leigh and told her where he was and that he had found Cowie. Then he called the cops.

Well, the cops couldn’t help. They said that since Jorge had not reported the dog missing, then there was no record that the dog was his.

Jorge said he could produce a stack of pictures that proved the dog was his, but they didn’t budge.

Jorge and a few neighbors that had gathered stood on the street in front of the house talking about how Jorge could get his dog back. They didn’t come up with anything.

Eventually, Jorge left. He didn’t want to, but nothing was happening. The lady that called him told him she would call if she had any news.

Jorge and Leigh sat up the rest of the night gathering pictures of Cowie. There really was a stack of them. Cowie with her brothers and sisters, Cowie running around the Irish wolfhound, Cowie swimming in a river, and even Cowie getting spayed (the vets were very sweet to take pictures).

They fell asleep hoping and praying.

The next morning, they were awoken by a knock at the front door. It was fairly early.

Jorge threw on some shorts and a shirt and ran to the door.

When he opened it, there was the lady, holding Cowie in her arms.

“Cowie!” yelled Jorge. “Cowie, Cowie, Cowie. You’re back.”

Jorge squeezed her really tight and kissed her and pet her.

Leigh came running out and did the same.

“I can’t believe it,” said Leigh. “How did you do this?”

“Well,” said the lady. “Last night, after you left, I went and opened the gate a little so that when the woman let your dog out to the back yard, she could escape, and then I just waited on my porch with my coffee and newspaper.”

“Really,” exclaimed Jorge.

“Then, all of a sudden,” she said, “Out came your dog. I called her over, put her in my car, and here I am.”

“Oh, thank you so much,” said Jorge as he hugged the lady. “You are the best.”

“Thank you,” said Leigh. “We have our dog back.”

“Oh, you’re welcome,” she said as she started toward her car. “Have a nice day.”

“We will,” they said as the got back to petting Cowie.

As it turns out, the temporary owners had renamed her “Heidi” and strapped on an orange collar. They took the orange one off, unhooked the old purple one from Jorge’s backpack and put it around Cowie’s neck.

Cowie was back!

Jorge and Leigh decided to pick out a few pictures from the stack they had been looking through the night before and attach it to some homemade bread. They gave one to the lady that got Cowie back, and one to the lady that posted the flyers further and further away.

Cowie wouldn’t be back if it weren’t for them.

Jorge fixed the broken gate with extra pieces of wood and lots of nails and screws.

The End