Last Tuesday was one of those days: I made a cup of tea in the morning, didn’t get to drink it, stooped to the disgraceful low of microwaving it, then found it in the microwave two hours later. We’d been waking Scarlett every four hours in the night, for the last week, to medicate her thanks to a recurring chest infection. That combined with three-month old Kyla’s night feeds and I was feeling mildly nauseous with exhaustion.
As frazzled as I was, I miraculously manged to fit in a dog-walk before taking the girls to a play group. You would think the dog might be grateful for such an act of devotion. He wasn’t.
While battling toddler, baby, bags and buggy in a bid to leave the house – for the second time before 10am – the little ratbag must have escaped behind my back. As I unsuspectingly closed the front door and bid Dante goodbye, the devil dog was merrily roaming the neighbours’ front gardens.
Two hours later I returned home feeling eager to get the girls down for a nap so I could revisit that cup of tea and maybe catch 40-winks myself. After a few minutes I suddenly realised Dante hadn’t bounded over to welcome us home. I checked all his usual hiding places and when he didn’t respond to my calls I began to feel a mild sense of panic. At this point I ran out onto our driveway and began shouting his name, followed closely by Scarlett who had found his lead and was trailing behind me shouting “Danta! DANTA!” When he was nowhere to be seen I felt my heart beating faster and the sense of panic turned to dread. What if he had been stolen? Knocked over by a car? As much as he annoys me, I didn’t want to have to explain the concept of doggy heaven to Scarlett just yet.
I went back inside and instinctively called Fox. He was at work and wouldn’t know where Dante was but at least I could share the burden.
“Dante is gone.”
“You’re kidding”.
The moment I explained Dante was missing, I heard his distinctive (loud) bark. Where was it coming from?
“Hold on, I can hear him.”
As I listened, I deduced the barks were coming from the other side of our living room wall.
“Never mind. That little….” I won’t say what I called him. “He is next door. I’ll call you back.”
I hung up and went next door to find no one was home. I called my neighbour’s mobile and explained to her that Dante was inside her house and asked if she knew how he got there. She didn’t. And she had left earlier than me so neither of us had any idea how “Houdini” had smuggled his way into their home. At this point a neighbour I had never met clarified that Dante was in fact next door and had been put there by another neighbour who had found him roaming the street.
Right. So someone found my dog and just put him into whichever house they thought he might belong? Very odd.
By this stage, my next-door neighbour is deeply disturbed by anyone having access to her house while she isn’t home, I am growing increasingly stressed and shouting at Dante through the letter-box to stop barking at the tortoise (they have a tortoise…Dante hates it) and Scarlett is crying because her precious “Danta” is imprisoned in someone else’s house.
Two hours later, the neighbour’s mum arrives to release a hoarse Dante and assumes the front door probably wasn’t shut fully that morning. I am so mad with the dog I send him straight to his bed and marvel at how only Dante could find himself in such a predicament.
I never got my cup of tea that day. Of all the shenanigans, that annoyed me the most.
We could have ended up with any dog in the world. We didn’t. We got Dante.
The Everyday Adventures of Scarlett and Dante 