Max

While visiting family in Fouke, Arkansas the weekend of December 31st my dog Max got lost. He was playing fetch with my husband's little cousins and having a good time when someone fired a gun. Max must have been frightened by the sound and hid.

We formed a search party and began looking for him everywhere. We checked under houses, searched the woods, drove the area calling his name, talked with neighbors, hung posters in the town, contacted Fouke City Hall and local kennels and even sent a missing dog poster to every person on myspace that I could find from Fouke, AR. I don't know what more I could do. I took two extra trips to Fouke to look for Max both ended in disappointment. Being that Fouke is 5.5 hours away it was a long drive to come back empty handed each time.

But then two months later my luck changed. I received a call on Sunday, February 16 saying that these people in Fouke had seen Max in their yard. Then, on Tuesday, February 18th a man called and said that he had just seen my dog on the side of the interstate. I thought it was too good to be true so I called my husband's mother who called her mother (who lives in that area) to go check it out. She went where the second sighting was and personally saw Max and described him to me while on the phone. I almost died when I heard her ask if he was wearing a blue collar. It was him, no doubt about it.

Well, Mamma Gail called for Max but he ran into a thicket of trees. She told me that I needed to come down to Arkansas to get him. I kicked around the idea for an hour and finally got the nerve to ask one of my boss' if I could take a vacation day to look for Max. He said he was a dog lover to and told me to go. So my husband and I drove to AR and arrived around 10:45-11:00 pm. We had flash lights and looked in the area where he was seen but couldn't find him. The next morning we got an early start around 7:30 am. We looked and looked but there was nothing. It was almost 10:00 am and we hadn't had breakfast so we went back to my mother in-law's house to eat.

After eating we went looking again but were armed with left over food from her fridge. Of course I missed my exit (where he was seen) and there he was. He was sniffing around some McDonald's trash on the side of the interstate. Toby jumped out of the car to get him and I drove down the interstate looking for a turn around. When I got back to the off ramp where we had seen him he was gone. Just in case he was in the woods I dumped some left overs from Toby's mothers house on the side of the road to see if we could lure him out. We walked over to this house/junkyard next to the interstate.

We talked to the owner and he said that he had seen Max a few times but he would never come close. He offered for us to look in his Junk yard and there was Max again. We called him and talked sweetly to him but he didn't recognize us. He just ran away. When we came to the junk yard fence we could see Max on the other side eating the food I had dumped out on the side of the interstate. So Toby and I jumped the fence and flanked him. He tried to run away and got passed both of us.

I thought to myself, 'this is too close, he can't get away'. I took off after Max running as fast as I could. When I got close to him I jumped and tackled him to the ground. He yelped and growled at me but then he recognized us as soon as Toby put his leash on him. He rolled over and started loving on us. He jumped up to hug us and was dancing around with joy. I started to cry because it was so emotional to finally have him back. I couldn't believe that after being gone for two months we finally had him back.

Max was really, really thin and looked so pathetic. Oh, man was he covered in ticks. He rested all the way home occasionally nuzzling our elbows for some attention. We are all so over joyed. And that is the story. He wasn't lost in Oklahoma but I had thought maybe he would try to make his way back home. Luckily he waited for us to find him there. We are so lucky.

Kendra, OK