I have two beagle pups. A boy and a girl, Duke and Katie. I love both of my dogs and they are very good company while the husband is away on this IA deployment. In fact they are “his dogs”. When they were born, he visited the breeder and picked them out at 4 weeks. He named them and he spoils them like they are our kids.

Katie is actually the best and worst behaved of both my dogs. She listens the best and also gets into the most trouble. She is known for among other things, eating the patio furniture cushions because she was bored and wanted to be “inside” vs. “outside”.

We’ll the other night we had an incident.

Duke my “good” dog got out of the yard.

We have a pretty large “field” behind us, with neighbors who have 4 cows. (Yes, I said cows. I’m still not used it, even after a year and half.)

I think Duke saw a squirrel. I tried to catch him, but it was useless. It was cold and just after 10pm. After several minutes of yelling “Duke”, “Come here Duke!” and driving around the neighborhood just in case the squirrel opted for the streets vs. the field with 4 cows sleeping nicely I’m sure, we surrendered the search and reluctantly went inside.

My son was so upset, “How can we leave Duke out there Mom?” I felt terrible, but I was not going to search in the dark and risk being “eaten” by something.

Truth be told, I’m a little afraid of hiking in the dark.

So, I tucked in the boy and said a few (many) prayers and went to bed.

About 5:30am I hear a scratch.

Yes, a scratch at my back door.

You would have thought it was a long lost family member coming home. I was so happy to see that dog at the crack of dawn that I didn’t care he had “pulled an all nighter”. When I opened the door, he slowly walked inside. He was warm, I think he must have slept in the dog house. I woke up my son, who just hugged and hugged him and proceed to tell him, “never do that again!”

I don’t know what I would have done if we would have lost the dog. My husband loves his dogs and I would have never forgiven myself. Do I think the dear Lord above heard my prayer?? …you bet I do! I am so happy and thankful Duke is back home and sleeping at this very minute in my sons room.

So, this whole episode has got me thinking that I might need to investigate putting up an electric fence. I don’t want to have to go through THAT again!

Beagles!