It looks like a regular morning. I get up and make some mates that go well with my sunrise routine: reading and writing. An hour later, my boyfriend walks out of the bedroom with the three dogs leading the way. The furry kids are ready for their morning walk. I let them go to the front courtyard where I change my shoes and then, we head outside to the dirt roads. Matilda, my toy poodle, never leaves my side. Valentino and Margaret go to their adventures among the bushes, under some trees, on top of some rocks, up and down the hill. Every couple of minutes they get back to me to see where I am. Sometimes I have to call them because they get too entertained and I get anxious if I can’t see them for a while. Margaret comes back as soon as she hears her name. Valentino needs two or three calls. He is very stubborn when he is doing something he likes, like sniffing the gophers’ holes and marking his territory.
“Let’s go to eat”, I shout when it’s time to go back. They usually run to the courtyard because they are looking forward to breakfast. This time, only Matilda is with me in the court yard and there is no sign of the other two dogs. I hung up the phone call I was on during the whole walk and start calling them. “Margaret! Valentino!” Nothing.
I hung up the phone call I was on during the whole walk and start calling them. “Margaret! Valentino!” Nothing.
I decide to put little Matilda inside the house so that I can walk quicker or run if it’s necessary. “Where are they?”, I start to question myself. “Margaret! Valentino!”, I start screaming. I wonder to the northeast side of the hill where Valentino enjoys going to sniff around. After a some minutes, Margaret comes back. She is alone, panting, with her tongue hanging outside her mouth and with a weird look on her face. She looks like she is happy, worried and tired all together. “Where is Valentino?”, I ask, and she barks back at me without getting closer. Then she points north, down the slope, the same direction she came from, asking me to follow her. I look in the distance but I don’t see signs of Valentino. The valley is so big, he could be anywhere. I only see rocks, hills, dirt roads, vineyards and houses in the extensive land. I exhale hard knowing what I was getting into, still in my pajamas. “Let’s go get him”, I told her.
The slope of the hill has some pathways that make our way down not so dramatic. We scroll down a couple of times to avoid some sharp brunches, but most of the path we picked is clear. When we make it to the first road that leads to my neighbor’s house, Margaret crosses it and keeps going north, down hill. Now the terrain is not so friendly. Luckily and to get some courage, I see something that could be Valentino two hills away. We move forward for a couple of yards but it is hard to hike, look for Valentino and keep Margaret close to me at the same time. When I see the deep ravine that I have to cross, I decide to go back to the road and call for help.
“Baby, we have an issue”, I alert my boyfriend over the phone. “I lost Valentino, so please get the car, go around the mountain and find me and Margaret at the neighbor’s drive way”, I instructed him. Thankfully this time, Jeff gets into action without questioning me to much. He knows my voice is not joking. When he gets to me, I let Margaret get on the car with him and ask him to drive north, two hills down the road while I start running through the bushes, again down the hill.
The pursuit
Finally, I see Valentino, one hill away from me. He is chasing something. “What is it?”, I question myself a little worried. I don’t want him to get into trouble with a wild animal. “Valentino! Valentino!”, I scream with all my lounge and throat strength. Valentino seems unable or unwilling to hear me. Then, a beautiful red fox jumps on rock ahead of us and looks back. The situation reminds me of that famous scene of The Lion King. The fox looks majestic on top of the rock. The dog-family animal knows Valentino is chasing it and soon, it realizes I am chasing both of them too so it turns around and keep going. Curiously, it doesn’t run fast but, of course, it knows its way around. Eventually I understand that it isn’t running away but actually playing chase with Valentino. “Great”, I complain.
At this point of my adventure, after surviving -excuse my drama- a couple of deep mudded ravines, I know Valentino can hear me but chooses not to come back to me. He is so interested in the fox that he keeps going after it. Suddenly I loose sight of him, but then I see the fox and I know he must be behind it. The fox seems to be enjoying everything, its tail wags every time it climbs a rock to look back. It is a good thing that my city-raised poodle is slow through the thick bushes, but that is not stopping him. Now I start to think that there is only one reason Valentino, an intact male dog, acts like that: “AFIH” a.k.a. a female in heat. When Margaret has her period, Valentino looses control. He doesn’t want to eat or sleep and definitely he doesn’t listen. He is acting like that as this moment. He is not barking, he is not looking to fight and he is definitely not hunting. He is just madly in love with this fox.
When I made it to a flatter area I am able to run faster and get closer. I am concern about who I am going to find first, Valentino or the fox. I can see neither of them yet but I know they’re close. “Valentino!”, I finally see him a couple of feet away. He looks at me and stop moving. His legs are full of mud up to his knees, and his body is full of brunches and leaves. His tail is wagging and even though his tongue is almost touching the ground, he seems to be smiling. “I’m in love, mom!”, I think he is telling me. I roll my eyes and let my boyfriend know that I got him. Jeff has been following the odyssey from the car like in one of those high-IT detective shows.
There’s no sign of the she-fox around and Valentino is sad about it. “Where is she?”, I can read on his watery eyes. Maybe she is watching from the distance or hiding behind a plant next to us. Who knows. I can’t let this love story go on so I wrap my treat-bag belt around Valentino’s neck and we head to the first road we see. After a couple of minutes, Jeff finds us and pick us up. My OCD boyfriend can’t believe his eyes when he sees how dirty Valentino is. Valentino jumps in the back seat with Margaret, and I finally sit and relax in the front seat with Jeff. I look at my boyfriend without saying a word. It’s hard for me to explain his mix of emotions right now. I see he is mad at Valentino, happy that we found him, and absolutely crazy about the fact that let the dirty dog jump in the back of his just-washed car. I would say he is very shocked and surprisingly speechless -LOL-. Let’s leave it like that.
The regular morning suddenly and unexpectedly turned into a crazy safari but with a happy ending. At least for me, that I found my dog, and for Margaret that was well compensated for her help. Valentino, on the other hand, had to spend some time in his crate. Poor thing, I bet he had enough punishment with his broken heart. My boyfriend, well, he found the right words to speak again after hand-cleaning his car: “I am going to the car wash”.
Leave a Reply