Day 12--- Miracle Day.

Gary and I left the house on Mother's Day morning at 10:30, planning to take down black/white posters of Savannah and put up ones in color. The black/white pictures had been put up hurriedly when we ran out of the better posters.  We also drove to a somewhat-local BBQ restaurant called "Truth" and my husband bought homemade cakes for our friends here who so relentlessly searched for Savannah. I think my husband and I both believed that Savannah was gone, just gone, and we wouldn't see her again, but we really needed to do something to thank our friends for their efforts and concern.

On the way back from the restaurant I began calling our friends to tell them we were on our way to their homes with a little thank-you gift for them. As my husband drove, we talked about Savannah and I said that wherever she was, I hoped she was happy and being cared for in a proper way... and maybe she was staying there because there was another puppy to play with. Gary asked me if that meant that I wanted to get another puppy and my immediate answer was "No. I'm not even over this one yet."

We got to K's house with the cake and she told us that during her morning walk with friend M, they had spotted dog poop along the walking path on J and L's pasture... they walk there every morning and hadn't even seen such evidence before that a dog had been on that part of L's property.  We told K that we would speak to J and L and ask them if we could walk along the path and search again for Savannah, even though every acre of that property had been searched over and over again during the last eleven days.

We got back into my husband's car and my cell phone was ringing. When I picked it up, I heard a voice saying "your dog" but that's all I heard until my husband turned off the car engine and I got better reception on my phone.  I said "Who is this?" into the phone and the voice I heard was that of our across-the-road neighbor, the one whose son had set off the mega-fireworks that had sent Savannah fleeing into the night on April 27th.  She asked me if I had found our dog yet and I tersely answered 'No.'  I didn't want to speak to her and had planned never to do so again.

But our neighbor persisted.... she said that her husband had seen a blonde and white dog speeding up our road and towards our house dragging a long blue leash behind her.  "That's Savannah!" I shouted into the phone. I told her we were five minutes away from home and would she please go over there and make sure Savannah didn't keep running or at least have a look and see which direction she ran if she didn't stop at our house.

As my husband drove towards home, we kept saying This is impossible, this is impossible.... could she have been close to home all this time while we were looking five, ten, and fifteen miles away?  We reminded ourselves that our friends had continuously checked their properties, the woods behind their pastures, the creeks, and even the catch-basins along the road-sides... no one saw any animal remotely resembling our Savannah so she couldn't have possibly been anywhere close by for all of these days.

When we pulled into our driveway, we saw the across-the-road neighbors in our yard... the wife by the gazebo in the side yard and the husband in the front yard. Savannah was not with them and as we got our of our car the neighbors were telling us that they lost sight of her because she was running so fast.  Gary went to the left of the garage, I went around to the right, both of us calling out Savannah! and thinking that if she were headed towards our back pastures, one of us would see her.

My husband, however, went up on the porch first, and there was our Savannah, sitting by the back door and leaning up against it, her long blue leash trailing behind her and stuck in the wood decking of the porch. As I was running along the side of the garage and heading towards the backyard, I heard my husband cry out "She's home! She's here! Right here!"  And there they were, both of them on the back porch near the door and all I remember saying at that point was "Savannah baby girl you found your way back home!" and then I was just crying and hugging her and my husband was crying and I was yelling out "Thank you! Thank you!" to the neighbors across the road... the same neighbors that I had vowed never to speak to again.  The neighbors yelled back that they were glad the three of us had a happy ending.

I started calling our friends... told them that Savannah was home, she was home, and she seemed to be fine except for a little bit of dirt and hundreds of sticky-burrs all over her. And one by one, and then two by two, they all came to our back door to say hello to Savannah and ask her where she had been and we gave them the cakes we had picked up at "Truth" and there wasn't a dry eye on our porch. We were all just crying and shaking our heads in disbelief as Savannah sat there looking at us as if she'd been gone for 10 minutes rather than 12 days.

While I was talking to the neighbors and pulling the burrs from Savannah's hair, my husband was feeding our prodigal dog bits and pieces of the smoked brisket he had just brought home from "Truth" and we all watched as Savannah gobbled everything up quickly. My friend Cindy kept telling her "Chew it, Savannah, chew it!" but Savannah was very hungry and kept eating that meat which had been nicely cut into precise chunks by my husband.

Gary and I are still more or less in shock. It is Monday morning as I'm typing now and I barely sat down all yesterday afternoon, except for typing a bit and making a couple of phone calls to my cousins in New York. Savannah's fur has been brushed, all the sticky-burrs have been removed, and except for a one-inch-long scrape on her left front paw, she seems to be fine. We will have her checked out by our vet, but we're giving her a day or so to settle in and settle down.

When Savannah first got home to our porch, she was panting and shaking and very anxious. She immediately recognized myself and my husband, as well as our friends who came here to welcome her home. I had been so worried that a 'different' dog would come back after all of those days in the woods but Savannah immediately resumed her inside-puppy manners the minute she walked into the back door. Her first stop was the water bowl, into which she promptly submerged half of her face and then dribbled most of the water onto the kitchen floor. Savannah's second stop was her bed in the corner of the breakfast room, which she happily curled up in but then got out of to follow us into the TV room. Savannah sat in front of us as we turned on the news and half-listened to it... she looked from me to my husband, then back to me again, then to Sweet Pea, and then Savannah slowly crawled up onto the sofa, right smack between us as she had always done, and tried to curl herself into a tight puppy comma. My husband looked at me and said "We really need to get a bigger sofa for Savannah."

I truly believe that the magic of love and the power of prayer helped bring Savannah back home. For all of Savannah's eight months with us, we had only walked her all the way up to the main highway three times. She didn't like most of the cars along our long and winding country road, and she barked at practically all of them during those long walks. As a result of that behavior, I decided to just walk her up and down our own road, which greatly lessened Savannah's chances of being familiar with all of the twists and turns of our hills here.

We have no way of knowing where Savannah was for the past twelve days. The pet psychics (both of them) told us that Savannah was far away, "much farther than you think."  Sonya Fitzpatrick said that Savannah's leash, collar, and tags were still intact and dragging; the Michigan psychic said that her leash and ID tags were gone.  Sonya told us that the day we rescued Savannah was the best day of her puppy life... that remark made us cry at the time, and it still makes us cry to think about it.

I know Savannah well enough to understand that she was overwhelmed by her experience. She is happy to be home, but was too exhausted to really enjoy her home-coming--- except for the brisket, which she gobbled up and looked for more.  My husband says that the next time he goes to "Truth" he will get two pounds of meat instead of just one.

It is ten o'clock on Monday morning as I type this. I have mopped up Savannah's dribbles from her water bowl twice since I got up, and I've had to sweep up dog hair on the kitchen floor six times since yesterday afternoon.  I have just three words to say now:   Life is good.