Journal 8

One time, when my family moved to a new house and a new town, we let our dog Snoopy out to explore the new area. We had only been there for around a day, and Snoopy hadn’t had a chance to go outside yet and look around our new home. My sister Faith let him out, and he ran outside, sniffing around and looking at the new trees and bushes in our yard. Faith went inside for a few moments to get something, and when she came back, Snoopy was gone. She realized that he had ran off, and after looking around the house, she became very emotional because she was very scared that something bad could have happened to him, or that he might have run off and couldn’t find his way back.  She was crying and was really, very scared for him, and also she knew the rest of us would be upset because we loved Snoopy and didn’t want anything bad to happen to him. Well, that was exactly what happened. Me and my other sister Lydia were really upset, and my parents were too. At first, none of us knew what to do because we hadn’t ever lost a dog before because Snoopy was our only pet at the time. After we reigned in our emotions though, my dad decided to solve the problem in a rational way. He said that the first thing we needed to do was predict where he might go and how far away he might be. My dad said that he most likely would try going towards the houses downtown because there were a lot of dogs in that area that Snoopy would be drawn too. He also noted that Snoopy was quite fast, but that if he was just looking around he would probably go slower so he could sniff things and get a better look at them. My dad then decided to gather a search party. He went around to some of our neighbors to let them know we’d lost our dog, and they offered to help. So we organized a group of people to go scope out the area because the more people helping would result in us finding Snoopy faster. My dad also told them that Snoopy would come to them if they called his name and clapped their hands at the same time. So all of us went out, car windows open, clapping our hands together calling for him. We all went around the intended route, and after around thirty minutes, we found Snoop! He had gone where my dad suspected, and was on the other side of town near a local gas station, covered in mud. At the sight of us he got extremely excited and was wagging his tail and jumping up and down all over us. The experience was extremely scary for all of us, and we all were very emotional, but in the end we solved the problem in a rational way.