David CookOne year ago this week, under heavy February skies, our dog went missing.
She was not one to wander. A long time ago, yes. But at 13, with hips like old kindling, she had become a front porch dog. She was always there. Always.
"She wouldn't go far," I would tell myself a thousand times in the days that followed. "She just wouldn't."
Her name was Scout, like the Harper Lee character. We got her in Virginia, during our honeymoon years of marriage. A black Lab, she came from the farmhouse litter of an English teacher known as the town grammarian. We figured her dogs would be just as proper and formal. We figured wrong.
Scout had the Bass Pro Shops esprit of most Labs; she was happiest around water. Back then, we lived near a river, and many days, Scout would break jail and race away from us across two streets, five backyards and the parking lot of a retirement home to reach the river, which was tidal, and full of daily surprises that washed ashore.
Dead carp, which were like Estee Lauder to Scout, who adored rolling all over their rotting, bloated bodies.
Ducks to chase. Driftwood to gnaw.
The tides kept coming in.
The tides kept going out.
Yet for all her Lab-ness, she had a fangy, Jack London-side too. She was a fighter, always on the lookout for threats. In the movies, she would be the Ray Liotta character. Fiercely loyal, but don't get on her bad side.
"She doesn't suffer fools," my dad once said.
We left Virginia for Chattanooga, and into the laundry years: two kids, homework, a middle-class front yard. We got a second dog. Installed an electric fence, which worked great until last February, when I was late changing the battery in Scout's electric fence collar.
"She wouldn't go far," I said.
We came home from work. Our two dogs there in the yard. An hour later, we go out to feed them.
One dog left.
"Scout?"
"Scout!"
The sun was setting, and I remember it beginning to rain. I grabbed a coat, gloves and two flashlights, and began searching. Up and down the road. Into ditches. Through the woods.
(In the corner of my mind, panic pulled up a chair and began warming up. Its time was coming.)
Was she hurt? Did she run off? Did someone take her?
Around 1 a.m. I came home, dripping rainwater on the kitchen floor, the flashlight still on in my hand.
"No," I told my wife. "Nothing."
The next morning we widened our search - a quarter mile down the road, then a half, then we got in the car and drove the neighborhood, then reversed it all. Friends and family helped. The kids made fliers. (It would catch our breath, months later, to see one still hanging on the supermarket bulletin board). We kept calling the pound.
A thousand times, I would see her black body, only to get close and find it was a shadow. Or a mossy rock. Or a crumpled-up Hefty bag in the ditch. Frantic, we even looked in closets, under the beds, as if she was closer than ever, like some practical joke.
"Sometimes, animals know when it's their time," one man said. "They go into the woods to die."
But she wasn't sick.
At some point I remember embracing my wife, and the two of us weeping. Our tears weren't only for our lost dog: They were for all our dog had meant to us. The first years of marriage. Our time in Virginia. All the times Scout would wag and wag, as if she had chosen us out of some litter, instead of us choosing her.
Searching for Scout turned into searching for something more.
Control.
Old dogs aren't supposed to vanish into thin air, just like marriages aren't supposed to fall apart, and tumors don't spread, and jobs aren't lost. Searching for Scout meant searching for an orderly and safe world, where dogs remain on the front porch, and the tides only bring in the things we want.
Losing Scout meant chaos. Mystery. Fear.
"Your lost dog?" one wise friend said. "She's teaching you about letting go."
We have yet to find Scout. In quiet ways, we still look. A quick glance at the ditches. A short walk through the woods. Maybe some other family found her. A good family. With a front porch.
Sometimes I daydream she made it all the way back to that Virginia river, just to stand in its waters, the tides lapping against her old body, the scent of dead carp filling her majestic Lab nose, hoping to see me there, throwing the driftwood sticks for her to chase, just one last time.
The tides come in.
Then one day in February, under heavy skies, the tides go out.
David Cook writes a Sunday column and teaches at McCallie School. Contact him at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook at DavidCookTFP.