Jumpin' Humpy

This morning I collected Vitus from Shari and Erin’s apartment, where he has been enjoying a “custody weekend” with his other family. After a leisurely stroll out to the end of the Spit I returned him to the apartment from whence he’d been collected, then headed back to my own home. I arrived home all of three minutes later, parked my truck and went around back to open the tailgate. Something was amiss. My dog was gone.

Neurons began firing, albeit slowly, very slowly. Had he fallen out (again)? No, I actually remembered snapping him to the tether. Could he have slipped his collar and then fallen out? No. Logic told me, even if memory did not, if that were the case his collar would be attached to the tether, and it definitely wasn’t there any more than the dog was. I could just about hear my little axons and dendrites trying to leap across those vast synaptic spaces in my nearly half-century old brain… Had I forgotten him at the Spit? I’d never done anything like that before but, well… After what seemed an eternity I realized I did remember giving him a treat after he jumped into the bed of the truck so I definitely hadn’t forgotten him out there… But he wasn’t here now. Damn. I’d lost my dog and I couldn’t remember what I’d done with him. I stood there staring vacantly into the bed of my truck as more of those seemingly endless mere seconds ticked, ticked, ticked on by. Finally, finally, I remembered! I’d just dropped him off at the apartment. Three minutes ago.