orange alert

Last night we were reading on the deck and the girls were sniftering their way around the yard when Belly starts on her orange alert, barking like a freakshow (she never does that). Steve's getting frustrated, telling me she's yelling at nothing (she really never does yell at nothing--she's not stupid), calling her up on the deck. She won't come, just keeps barking. I tell him to go down there and GET her if it's bothering him so much. He's not wearing shoes, so he can't. I go into the yard to get her and I see this very old man a couple yards away doing something to his fence. See, I say to Steve, she's not yelling at nothing. There's a man there fixing his fence.

I get Belly to stop barking and we all go in to start making dinner (yes, the girls help). Steve decides to lock the girls in so that they won't keep barking at the man. About ten minutes later, Belly's staring at the dog door and I say to Steve that we have to let them back out. Well, he's gonna go check on where that man is first. He goes out there and sees the man being walked back up the little mound behind our neighbor's yard by two nurses. "Honey, he ran away," he tells me. He wasn't fixing his fence and he wasn't out for an evening walk. He was lost. He was holding onto the fence to steady himself. There's a retirement home behind those buildings behind the trees behind our yard. We were completely depressed the rest of the night.

And then it occurred to me that maybe Belly actually HELPED. I like this story the best. The nurses didn't know where this poor little old man could be but they heard my booda barking barking barking at him, so they followed that sound. And they found him safe before he got to Hershey Ave.