<a href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_8FX19ncyFB4/RsCHF4qtbYI/AAAAAAAABow/s0cdEFftPAI/s1600-h/dsc0291cw5.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5098223313364020610" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_8FX19ncyFB4/RsCHF4qtbYI/AAAAAAAABow/s0cdEFftPAI/s200/dsc0291cw5.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Sadie was brought home last night, after being dog-napped and living a mysterious life for six days. Her "mom" and "dad"—my friends Nic and Heather—will never fully know where she was, how she was cared for, or what was going through the minds of her captors, but they have their dog back, along with a story that will surely travel through life with her.</span>

Here's what happened, as we know it. Last Monday afternoon, Sadie was out running around in her large fenced in yard, which is on a corner lot bordering a somewhat busy street. When Heather opened the door to call her in, Sadie wasn't there, even though there was no evidence of a gate left open or a hole dug under the fence.

Nic and Heather, with help from friends and neighbors, spent the evening looking for her. When it was dark, they finally went home and began posting notices online and printing out fliers with Sadie's picture, which they plastered all over town. They hardly slept that night. As Nic said in an email, "I mostly laid in bed crying. <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">I'm not sure what </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">is worse—thinking the dog might be dead on the road somewhere or knowing </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">that the dog is with some stranger who isn't willing to give her back."</span>

And they had reason to believe the second scenario was true. On Tuesday morning, Heather got a call from someone who had seen a flier. She told Heather her friends had Sadie. She would simply contact her friends then call Heather back to arrange a drop-off. She never did.

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What followed over the next five days was exhausting and heart-wrenching. Nic and Heather and dozens of their friends and relatives left countless messages on the voicemail of the woman who called Heather Tuesday morning. The police were involved, and they eventually left messages for this woman, also filing a subpoena to obtain her name and address through her cell phone number.

By Wednesday, Nic was leaving messages regularly, saying things like "Hey, it's Sadie's dad. I was just missing her and wondering how she's doing today," and, "If you're wondering what kind of food to feed Sadie, we give her Purina puppy formula. You also might notice that she's extremely itchy. It's an allergy, and you should give her a children's strength Benedryl twice a day."

By Thursday, Sadie's face was everywhere I went in this town. She stared at my from her flier on the door of Aroma cafe, where I sat trying to get some client work done. <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">That evening, Nic and Heather were on the evening news; it seemed like the entire community knew their story. </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></span>

<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">By Friday, though, the police weren't returning Nic and Heather's calls, and didn't seem to be pushing much to get the subpoena through, even though they clearly said someone had committed a felony by keeping a dog that wasn't theirs and not reporting it.</span>

I know Sadie is "just a dog," but waiting for news about anything extremely precious to you is excruciating. Just in the past week, both my father-in-law and a close friend, Melissa, were waiting for biopsy results. The families of six trapped coal miners in Utah have been all over the news, as they wait to hear whether the drill working its way down to the missing miners hit its mark, and whether any signs of life are detected. Throughout this maddening war in Iraq, countless people have been waiting for the people they love to come home safely, and not leave again.

Waiting is maddening, in part, because it all seems inevitably accompanied by the unanswerable question "Why?"<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> which looms largest late in the night, when you can't do anything about your situation except try to piece together a small prayer, then attempt to sleep. In the mornings, when you first open your eyes and you're floating somewhere between the life you lived before the waiting and the current reality, it's almost physically painful when your mind suddenly comes into crisp focus. </span>

<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">What can you possibly do to pass the time, after you've prayed, done everything in your human power to fix the problem, and then prayed some more?</span>

Sweating it out with physical labor is one option. Twice during their long week of waiting, Nic and Heather came over in the 90+ degree heat to help Jason and I dig and move about 100 cubic feet of dirt from one corner of our yard to the other. (We're building a patio, not simply giving our sad friends something to do to pass the time.) We didn't talk about Sadie much, but it was obvious to me that Nic and Heather had pretty much given up hope of her being returned.

Then, on Saturday evening, the waiting was suddenly over, just like that, and Sadie was home.

Whether it was the endless phone messages, the presence of Sadie's photo on the news and all over town, or the calls from the police, the people who were keeping Sadie decided to do the right thing. The homecoming was highly suspicious, involving a cryptic phone call and then the appearance of a shady-looking character at their door, handing over Sadie along with an obviously made-up story and fake name for himself. But Sadie is with her rightful owners.

Today, Jason and I and some others went out for lunch with Nic and Heather after church. Several people in the restaurant recognized them and came to the table to sympathize and then share in the joy of good news. Phone calls came in, too, as news spread of Sadie's return. Other King Charles Cavalier Spaniel owners are particularly rejoicing; Sadie has been invited to "playdates" and birthday parties with the Cavalier Spaniel set. What dog wouldn't want to get in with Sadie? She's clearly a celebrity.

Apparently, the happy ending will be reported as a follow up story on the 10 o'clock news tonight. I'm not a fan of TV news casts—the bad news and drama seems overly dramatized, while the happy news is too shiny and bright—but I can see why people love these stories. We live in a world full of "why" questions, without good answers. So much is in the balance, ready to tip one way or another, so when that precarious scale tips, landing a sweet, innocent puppy back home with her loving family, we can all hope to generate some happy dreams that night.
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