This happened day before yesterday and I have been too busy to remember to come here and update... I did write about it on my favorite boards though, so here is a cut&paste.

Foxy got lost.
She and D'Oji have done so well here at the new place that we let them out for a while to do their business alone. Foxy is mostly blind and mostly deaf, has arthritis in her hips and legs and is 18 years old this December so I didn't expect her to wander off. She wandered to the end of the street last winter and someone picked her up and took her home, but this time I was sure it wasn't the same misguided Good Samaritan notion.
We called the animal shelter on Friday because she went missing that morning, but they had no calls about dogs matching that description and were closed til Monday. We drove around for miles, talked to perfect strangers, heck, we even stopped kids on the street to ask them if they'd seen her. We got a call last night.

A man was kayaking down the Deschutes river and found her in Tetherow Log Jam, 15 miles down river. She is home now, doing ok. The best we can figure is that our new street dead ends in the state park service entrance (blocked only by a yellow swinging gate) about 2 miles north of here and she must have followed our road straight into the park. Then she must have tried to get a drink or simply tripped and fell into the river... after her bought of doggy vertigo 2 years ago her balance is off and her legs are stiff enough from the arthritis that she wouldn't have been able to recover fast enough to not fall in.
What saved her during that 15 mile stretch is that the Deschutes is 85 miles of smooth, slow, gentle river. The class 5 rapids are further south and she missed them altogether.
The man was kayaking and saw her stuck half in, half out of the water on the Tetherow Log Jam and managed to get her out of the river and up the bank, then got her back to his car and drover her home before calling us to come get her.
She was barely moving, not responding to anything. We got her home, gave her something for any pain and I checked her over good... not one scratch. No yelps of twitches from pain, no breaks, just exhausted.
We stopped and tempted her with a hamburger patty on the way home to see if she would eat and man, was she hungry. She doesn't have any rattle or wheeze to her breathing, her lungs are clear. This morning she woke me up and had more to eat and drink then begged to go out. She wandered the yard slowly and with sore looking legs, but did her business and then stood in the sun for a while. I brought her back up to my room to sleep some more. She has been sniffling and sneezing a bunch but since her lungs are clear I think she got some up her nose.


I have had her for so long, she has been apart from me once, when I lived in a place that wasn't pet friendly. I was so scared, so worried, I would have been broken-hearted if she hadn't made it. I am still checking on her every few minutes to make sure she is breathing, happy, comfortable... as Mike said to the wonderful people who rescued her, "Foxy predates me". I love my husband and kids, folks, so don't get bent out of shape, but Foxy was my pillow when I cried myself through loneliness and anger in my teen years, she was my warm fuzzy foot stool when I was pregnant for the first time. She is the one that broke in our new puppy to the house rules :) She and I are forever, know what I'm saying?
Today she is doing really well, lounging in the sun and enjoying a gorgeous 74 degree day. She made it up and down the stairs, eating and drinking, no apparent respiratory discomfort, still going to the bathroom regularly.