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Poor Wand'ring PuppyJuly 18, 2007 Rhodry hates thunder. When thunder starts to rumble, he seeks refuge at the foot of the nearest stairs. Lower seems to be safer as far as he's concerned. If all doors are closed he goes to ground in the nearest bushes. So the thunder started rumbling early this afternoon and kept it up intermittently all day. Rhodry's hearing isn't what it used to be, so I think that he doesn't hear the thunder till the ground starts vibrating, in which case it's long past time to get out of Dodge. This afternoon he was snoozing under the deck when the storm rolled in. He didn't come up to scratch on the door. He just disappeared. He didn't show up when I was ready to leave for the barn (it was pouring down rain, so this was a little later than usual, around 4 p.m.). I called and called; I walked around and called some more. I started the truck. No Rhodry. I guessed he was hunkered down in the undergrowth somewhere. When I got back about two hours later, I walked around and called. Still no Rhodry. I was about to call Animal Control, but there was a message on my machine: "Your dog is at the Tisbury pound." Whew. By then it was after hours so I can't collect him till the morning. Poor puppy. The thunder's still rumbling and he's all by himself, and in a strange place. Don't worry, Rhodry. I'm coming to get you. Rhodry spent a night in the Tisbury pound when he was about nine months old. I'd gone to deliver a job to a client on Abel's Hill in Chilmark (loose translation for off-islanders: on the far side of the back of beyond). Rhodry was scampering around outside. When I finished with the client -- no Rhodry. I walked all around, stopped by the house of an acquaintance whose dog Rhodry had played with. Still no Rhodry. Turned out some "nice" (#*&$%ing) do-gooders had seen a cute puppy scampering around, looked at his Tisbury tags, and decided that he'd wandered all the way to Chilmark by himself and couldn't find his way home. They decided to deliver him to the address on his ID tag. State Road, Tisbury, isn't hard to find now, and it wasn't then either, but 12 years ago hardly anyone outside of town had street numbers on their houses so of course they couldn't find the address, and no one answered the phone at my house because I was frantically roaming around Abel's Hill looking for my dog. Around 8:15 I finally established that Rhodry was at the pound. Joanie, the West Tisbury animal control officer (who must have been covering Tisbury at the time), volunteered to drive down-island to spring Rhodry from his cage. I said he could wait till morning. From the day little Rhodry moved in, I'd been saying "Good night, Rhodry. I'm glad you're my puppy" every night as I dropped off to sleep and "Good morning, Rhodry. I'm glad you're my puppy" every morning when I woke up. It was weird saying "Good night, Rhodry" to my empty little cottage when Rhodry was three miles away at the pound, but I said it anyway. I still say "Good night, Rhodry" almost every night and "Good morning, Rhodry" almost every morning, and I'll say it tonight, but this time I'm thinking that one of these days Rhodry won't be here and he won't be at the pound either. He's not a nine-month-old puppy anymore; he's twelve and a half. I wonder how far he went to get away from the thunder, and how he got to the pound. Maybe I should get him a cell phone with GPS. Good night, Rhodry. I'm glad you're my puppy but I ate the popcorn all by myself.
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