Moving Cross Country with Two... wait, one?, no, Two Dogs.

Since the journey from Kansas to California turned out to be so eventful, I decided to blog this baby in several parts.

We actually set out on time after my final appointment at AG on Fort Leavenworth (which was totally unexpected, the Army defines the "hurry up and wait" mentality). I was teary as I said that final good-bye to all the people I'd worked with over the last three years. Maybe I was also a little teary anticipating the 1800 mile drive in a van packed to the hilt, who knows?

The drive across Kansas that Thursday was uneventful and we pulled in to the La Quinta Inn by the Denver airport late in the evening. After a really awful steak from the Outback (that Jeremy, my white knight, traded me for) we had a decent night sleep, thanks to the sound machine that blocked all the weird hotel noises that made our dogs woof and growl. Friday morning started without incident until I asked Jeremy to take the dogs out to the giant field (we didn't know truly how giant at this point) behind our hotel for a game of fetch before another 9 hours in the car. I had no sooner climbed out of the the shower than I got a phone call from Jeremy (7:46am, exactly). He said, " I need you, asap"! I threw on clothes and ran out barefoot to fine him leashing Bentley back up, tossing me the leash and saying, "Nessa took off, I need to catch her". Our wimp of a dog had been terrified by a garbage truck picking up a dumpster.

Bentley and I jogged back into the hotel and I finished getting dressed, strapped Rowan in the Baby Bjorn and the three of us headed back out to help with the search. After about an hour of traipsing through the old sunflower field wrought with pricklers (which latched onto Bentley's feet and my clothes and skin), we re-grouped, still without our dumb blonde dog. Jeremy kept up the search and I returned to the hotel to give Bentley's pads a break and start the process of putting out the word that our dog was missing.

Amidst my recurring tears, I called Home Again who faxed a lost poster to all the animal organizations in a 20 mile radius and posted a Craig's List ad. Jeremy returned and we decided visit to the nearby farms to get people on the look-out and cruise the highway looking for her sad little body (figured, hey, better to confirm the worst than just to FEAR it). After she'd been missing for about 3 hours I felt utterly hopeless. The pessimist in me had decided that we simply weren't going to find our Nessa. I felt that we had failed her; I was finally experiencing that panic that pet owners feel when their beloved friends go missing. We committed to caring for her and should have kept her safe, but instead, she was, for all I knew, wandering the city of Denver alone and scared and, as Nessa always is, hungry.

Although I was feeling largely negative and sad, there were bright points of hope that kept springing up. Jeremy was dedicated to doing all the he could to find her. He made and printed posters and distributed them to all the near-by hotels and businesses and spent nearly 8 hours that day walking that enormous field. A dear woman who happened to be applying for a job that day, saw our poster and called me and committed to joining the search by hanging posters in her near-by neighborhood and offering to keep Nessa when she was found if we had been forced to continue our journey without her. My wonderful friends, thousands of miles East put out their feelers and posted pictures of adorable, stupid Nessa on Facebook. Everywhere I looked, people were encouraging us, helping however they could, and being generally kind.

Jeremy embarked on one more walk-thru before darkness fell while Rowan, Bentley and I sat in the hotel room, waiting on a call from SOMEone that Nessa had been found. My phone rang Jeremy's special ring around 6:30pm and I answered in the dejected tone that had become the day's mantra, expecting him to say he was returning for the night, empty handed. I was totally taken off guard to hear, "We're a two dog family again, hon!"! Apparently Nessa had holed up about 3/4 mile across the field near a barn. How unlikely, we had found our needle in the haystack.