Years ago, I moved back in with my mother. I had been on my own for quite a while, and I had become ill. I had been ill before, but this time it was bad, and I wasn’t getting any better. So, with her constant urging, along with everyone else’s, I moved back in with her, but only until I got better.
Well, I got better, but then she got sick. I stayed to take care of her, and the plan was that after she got better, I would move out. She got better, and the cycle repeated itself.
So, I stayed. She also needed help taking care of the house, and I didn’t like the idea of her being by herself in that big house, so it all seemed to work out.
Today we are both in kind of sad shape. She no longer drives, so I do all the driving for her.
Years ago she wanted to get a “weekend get-away” that she could go to on the weekends in the summer and relax. She ended up buying a little house trailer along a river about an hour and a half away from home. So, every weekend in the summer we go to the river. Me, my mother, our 6 year old border collie Missy, and our 4 year old Shih Tzu Kaylee.
FINDING BOBBY
It was Friday, the beginning of Memorial Day weekend, and we were headed to the river. It was the first big holiday weekend, so naturally it was cold and raining. It had been raining hard since we got up in the morning, and the wind was gusting and cold. Even though the weather was miserable, we still went to the river.
The driving conditions weren’t the greatest, to say the least. At times it was difficult for me to see out of the windshield, even though the windshield wipers were going as fast as they could trying to keep up with the rain.
It was just over an hour and a half into the trip when I made the final turn onto the road that would get us to the trailer. This road, like most of the roads along the way, was in the middle of farm country, so there was nothing around but empty fields.
I was concentrating on the road, trying to watch where we were going, when suddenly I saw something out of the corner of my eye. It was way off in the distance to the right in an empty field, and it was heading to the left. It was small, and I couldn’t make out what it was. I watched as it came across the field, disappeared in a ditch for a second, reappeared and crossed the road, disappeared in the ditch on the left side of the road, and then reappeared. I only saw it for a second when it came out of the ditch and headed off to the left. Later on, my mother said that she saw it also, and she didn’t know what it was either.
When I got to the area where I saw it cross the road, about a half mile from the trailer, I slowed the truck down and looked out of the window. I saw a little black dog, soaking wet, eating stubble or dead leaves or something in the field. The crops hadn’t come up yet, so there really wasn’t anything good out there for it to eat.
My heart sunk when I saw that. That poor little dog, out in the cold and wet, eating nature’s trash out in a muddy field. It was like somebody took a sledgehammer and hit me right in the gut.
I looked over at my mother, and she said “You want to go back?” She said it jokingly. She always said that when we saw a dog while we were traveling because I had always said that 2 dogs were enough, and I couldn’t handle a third.
Well, she said “You want to go back?”, and I didn’t say a word. Of course I was going back. I had to go back. I couldn’t leave that poor little thing out in the rain. Maybe if he had tags on his collar I could find his home and bring him home. Surely there was someone that was missing him.
We came to a cross street, so I turned around and headed back. My mother asked me if I was going back there, and I said that I couldn’t just leave that poor thing out there, maybe he had tags or some kind of ID.
I went back and he was still out there in the field. I pulled the truck over, got out and went to the front of the truck. He was far enough away from me that I couldn’t see if he had any tags or not. He looked up at me and I called him. He took a few steps toward me and stopped, so I called him again, “come here baby”. This went on a few times, so I crouched down and called him again. He came farther toward me than he had been, so I held out my arms and called him again. He came running through the ditch, down one side and up the other, and headed toward me.
I thought “OK, now I can check and see if he has any tags.” I thought that he would come up to me and stop, and I’d check him for tags or some other type of identification. I thought wrong. He came running up to me and jumped up into my arms! My natural reaction was to hold on to him. When he jumped, he jumped up to my right shoulder. I automatically put my right forearm under his backside and my left hand in the middle of his back.
I couldn’t believe it. One second I’m crouched down calling this little dog, and the next I’m standing there with this poor thing in my arms. I had to stand there for a second and try to get everything that I was feeling straight. He had his front paws and his head on top of my right shoulder, and I swear that I could feel him holding on to me. Then I felt the little dog himself. He was soaking wet and shivering like mad. The poor thing was freezing. My left hand could feel the wet hair and bones. I could feel his spine and his ribs through all of that hair. The little guy was starved!
For some strange reason, the name “Greyfriar’s Bobby” came to mind. Maybe subconsciously I saw something in common between this little dog and the story of Greyfriar’s Bobby. That’s why I named him Bobby.
So there I was, standing at the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere in the pouring rain, holding on to this little dog that I decided to call Bobby. And I knew I was done for. That little guy stole my heart in those few seconds, and there was nothing that I could do about it. I knew he was coming home with us, and that’s where he was going to stay.
I went to my mom’s window and I told her that the dog didn’t have a collar or tags. I also told her that I could feel his spine and ribs with my hand, and that he was nothing but skin and bones. I asked her what she wanted to do, and she said that we should take him down to the river and dry him off and get some food into him. That saved me the trouble of telling her that that is what we were going to do.
I got in the truck and I tried to put him down on the seat next to me, but that little guy had a grip on me and he wouldn’t let go. Surprisingly, our other 2 dogs only carried on a little bit. They barked a little, gave him a good sniff, and left him alone. I ended up driving the rest of the way to the river with my left hand and holding on to him with my right.
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