Mistaken Identity

by: a volunteer

If I hadn't been there, I would have never believed the story if someone were to tell it.

I get a call late one afternoon from Florence, who is clearly very upset and if she hadn't already been crying, she was on the verge of tears. I could barely understand what she was saying but I kept hearing "Sara". When I finally managed to get her to calm down enough to tell me what was going on, she tells me that a contractor had left about an hour ago and somehow, he let the "back room" dogs out of the gated area. Well she managed to get all of them back in, except for Sara. She said she couldn't leave all of the animals and wanted to know if I would go look for her. I had never seen Sara before and Florence told me she is "distinct" with orange and white markings.

Well, I set out.... and drove, and drove, and drove. I finally found Sara (orange and white) not too terribly far from Journey's End. I threw my car into park before I had even come to a complete stop, left the door open, the car in the middle of the road, my purse on the front seat and took off running. I followed Sara for about a mile and kept calling but she wouldn't come to me so I ran back to the car and went back to Journey's End to get Florence.

All of the front room dogs were out in the greeting area and Florence, in a rush, put the big dogs in the jeep that was parked in the front for just a minute so we could go get Sara.

We drive back to the area (dogs still in the Jeep back at Journey's End) where Sara was and we see a man and his son holding Sara in their driveway. We jump out of the car, say Thank You!, Thank You!, Thank You!, load Sara up and head back to Journey's End. Not only did the man and his son have a puzzled look on their faces when we left, I looked over at Florence and she had a really strange look on her face as we were driving back to Journey's End.

When we got back to Journey's End and got Sara out of the car, Florence looked up at me and said, "this isn't Sara". I all but screamed, "Florence, you've got to be kidding me!". I looked down at the dog's collar and sure enough, it wasn't Sara but she could have been her twin. We called the owner and as it turns out, this dog had gotten separated from her human while on a hunting trip. The man and his son had also called the owner and couldn't figure out, I'm sure, why Florence and I were there picking up someone else's dog but they never said a word.

All's well that ends well as it turns out. The other dog's human arrived quickly to pick up his dog and Sara showed up at the front gate shortly thereafter with tail wagging. I couldn't have made the story up if I had tried.