Yesterday during our first ten minutes on the woodland trails we normally circuit daily with our two little dogs, we briefly came across a Golden Retriever whose behaviour clearly shouted out 'confused' and 'lost'. The dog sped by us in an obvious panic of not knowing where its human was; at some time in their hike through the woods they became separated. There was no opportunity to stop this very upset dog, he just whizzed by us, not once but on several occasions as we made our way along the trails.

A young women whom we'd never before seen in the woods but appearing quite comfortable making her way along the trails stopped to speak of her impression of a dog she'd encountered but no one with it, and the dog unwilling to linger, driven to keep looking. My husband remarked to her that he thought he had heard someone in the distance calling....

A day earlier we'd finally come across a  casual  acquaintance we've known for years with his large, friendly dog. The dog, as usual on sighting us made swiftly toward us to be stroked. Charlie is a very emotionally needy dog, wanting always to be noticed and to be petted. She pays no attention whatever to our two much smaller dogs' noisy antics. But a week ago she was nowhere to be seen, unresponsive when our friend whistled for her, and by then, he informed us, she had been gone for at least 20 minutes.

Charlie in a winter photo

Characteristically, she forges ahead and he brings up the rear, and most often she isn't in sight. Besides which, our friend tends to stop for lengthy periods of time when he comes abreast people he knows and as someone addicted to hearing himself speak on any subject whatever, goes on forever and tends to 'forget' about Charlie's whereabouts. Four hours, she was missing that day, he told us. He hadn't wanted to leave the forest without her, so remained there, hoping she would return. He had no idea that hours earlier a telephone message had been left at his home that someone had discovered her in their backyard. Those good souls took Charlie into their house and allowed her to entertain them  until our friend finally showed up for her.

Since we no longer saw the Golden that we presumed was lost as we continued along our usual circuit, we made the assumption that it had been finally re-united with its walker. We've come across such situations all too often, but for the most part things work out in the end.