10/28/11 WE'LL KEEP THE LIGHT ON FOR HIM A WHILE YET

LUCKY DURING THE SUMMER

Friday, 8:30 AM.  32.5 degrees, wind WNW, calm. The sky is overcast with high dark clouds.  It rained off and on much of yesterday and the barometer predicts more of the same.
    Yesterday was spent mostly in looking for our pal Lucky, either as a primary activity tramping the wild areas or secondary, keeping an eye out going to the post office, or the store.  I walked every ravine and woods near home, and visually scanned the further areas.  I looked under neighboring porches and decks, inside open garages, behind and underneath stored boats.  No dog.
    Every time the phone rang, and it rings often at thr Odes, I half expected it to be someone who had found him.  No luck.
    City hall and the police have been alerted that he is lost.  His collar has his license and information attached to it.
    If I had been carrying a sidearm and stumbled across a  bear it would have been dead, guilty or not.
    While we were eating dinner I heard a noise on the back porch, and turned on the light, half expecting it to be Lucky looking for his dinner. It was an empty pot rolling around. No dog.
    Lucky has been gone thirty-six hours now, too long, I fear, for an old dog literally on his last legs to survive in the rain and mid-thirty-degree weather.  Last night I emptied his food dish and washed it.  Not a sign of hope. 
    If he should miraculously show up, like Lazarus back from the dead, I will boil some hamburger and mix it with  yogurt and spoon feed it to him.  But I fear he has, as our Ojibway  neighbors would say, “walked on.” But we will keep the light on for him a while yet.