Tofu's big adventure

So this weekend was interesting. Saturday was a day that started out very sad and ended very happy. In between, I discovered how awesome it is to have a boyfriend who will give up half of his weekend to do something nice for me/my family.

On Saturday morning, I was out running errands with Kansas and generally having a pretty good day when my mom called to tell me our dog (a 7-pound mini dachshund named Tofu Smart Dog) got out of the yard and was MIA. She'd driven around the neighborhood looking for him and a few people she saw out on the street had seen him, but no luck. The Humane Society had already closed for the weekend.

Kansas and I went home and walked around the neighborhood, which includes quite a few steep hills, for about an hour handing out our phone number to people who were outside and asked them to look for him. We didn't find him and came home. My mom was really devastated about losing the dog (the gate somehow was left open). Kansas and I went out again for a while before coming back to help hand out fliers. Mom and dad and two of their friends divied up the neighborhood with us and we walked around knocking on every door to hand out fliers. We put them up on posts and in paper boxes and on car windshields. A few people had seen him, but the reports of just where he had been seen were varied and indicated he'd run up on the mountain behind the neighborhood. He'd been gone for about 9 hours. At this point, it was dark and cold and we couldn't do anything. Dad bought us pizza and Kansas and I, both completely exhausted, promised to get up in the morning and hike up the mountain to look for Tofu. I was pretty confident he'd be all right and that if he wasn't in someone's house, he'd be able to find his way home and that he knew I feed the cat on the porch late at night (he likes to lick out the cans).

Kansas went home and my very sad parents went to bed. I was about to turn off my TV and go to sleep when I heard a far-off, quiet, familiar bark. I was watching a show with a dog in it at the time, so I wasn't sure if I'd really heard anything. I got up and went out into the main room, where the doggie door is, and called the dog's name. He didn't come, but I heard a bark again. I decided to look in the front yard, and as soon as I opened the door, a VERY tired, limping little dachshund ran into the house. His paw pads were scraped up and he was starving, but he was home. My parents were of course overjoyed. I sent Kansas a text message (that he didn't get until the next morning) and we stayed up for a bit with the doggie, who ate about half his body weight before passing out on my dad's lap.

Sunday, I drove around the neighborhood with my odometer set and if Tofu was really seen everywhere people told us he was, he covered about 3 miles on those teeny little legs. Even I wouldn't have wanted to make that walk up those hills.

What I wouldn't give to know what he really did that day.