In case Monday weren’t bad enough on it's own…

Got up this morning and took a shower right away. Went to make my coffee before getting ready and didn’t see Chili, I assumed he was outside. So I looked out the window and didn’t see him, went to the back bedroom and still didn’t see him, uh oh! The gate was open! Not sure how that happened…was just sure that Chili was gone. I woke up Jess and saw that Chili at one point was in our front yard as he relocated our gutter extension. I have no idea how the gate would open because I have a hard time opening it when I try to. I hop on my bike and Jess in the car and we scour the neighborhood. I’ve rode every road within almost a mile each way of our house and nothing. Finally at about 7:30 I come home and am not sure what to do. Jess decides to take a shower as we hope for a call. I jump back into the car to keep looking. 10 minutes later Jess calls saying our neighbor saw Chili in the park down the street. I sped to the park (I was in my car now) and didn’t see him. All of a sudden when I am on the other side of the park, I see Chili walking down our road. I speed back to our road and didn’t see him. I pull into our driveway ready to go on foot and there is Chili in the garage. He walks out and is excited to see me. Jess followed closely behind and the reunion was awesome. After about 15 minutes of searching, it’s hard not to fear the worse. Chili isn’t a bright dog so I figured he’d never find his way back home after he went exploring. We live by lots of major roads and there are tons of dogs, people, cars within a couple miles. We kept hoping for a call.

The after effect? I had a small cold when I woke up. Riding an hour on a cold, windy morning with wet hair didn’t help. Nor did the constant calling of Chili. I now have a full blown cold. Riding in my boxers and sweat pants with lots of shifting on the seat while looking around also gave me a whole mess of chafing. Guh! But we are so happy to have Chili back, this is the worse escape yet. Chili only got away from us once and I only had to run about ¼ mile barefoot to catch him. Popeye escaped twice, once in his old neighborhood but everyone knew him there and someone brought him back, and once in our neighborhood but he likes to walk on the side of the road and we found him two blocks away. Crazy times on a Monday morning! Go Brewers!