The best doggie in the whole wide worldThings aren’t so good here. It’s all I can do to write this. On Thursday evening after work, I took my dog, Siggy, to the park, as I do pretty much every night. It was a dark, cold, rainy, crappy evening, which is generally OK by me. Siggy went off into the woods as he always does. Unfortunately, he never came back out again. I wandered about in the rain calling and whistling. A dark day became a black night, and my wife came out with flashlights as we slogged through the mud and the poring rain for hours, until it became clear that Siggy wasn’t coming. I went back out to the park yesterday morning at the break of dawn (such as it was; more constant rain), and plodded through the woods in every direction I could think of. I’d hoped that, in the daylight, Siggy would make his way to the open park area, but he wasn’t there. This park is surrounded by thousands of acres of heavy woods, and my only hope was that, if I came close enough and yelled loud enough, he’d hear me and come running.

He either didn’t hear me, or he wasn’t in a position to come to me. I spent most of yesterday there, with a brief break in between to dry my clothes, and warm my hands a bit. I truly believe that Siggy would have come back to the park if he could have. This either means that he’d gotten so lost in the dark that he was unable to find his way back, or something happened to him. I can’t bear to think about the things that may have happened to him.

I know not all of you are animal people (let alone dog people). If you are, then you know how I feel right now. If you’re not, then I envy you, because I’d give everything I have not to feel the way I do right now. Siggy isn’t just a part of my family; he’s my best friend. Pretty much my only friend, to tell you the truth (except for my wife, of course). I really don’t know what I’m going to do.