Fourth of July Drama

Last night was a wild night. We had decided to bring Belle with us down to the lake to watch the fireworks as we thought she may do better being around people when the fireworks started to launch, boy were we wrong.



15 minutes before 9 they tested the fireworks with just 1 launch and when Belle barely flinched we thought we were in the clear. At 9PM the fireworks started with a flurry of explosions about 200 yards away. Belle completely wigged out. I picked her up and and tried to comfort her... She seemed to calm down a little once I covered her with a blanket and then all hell broke out. Belle somehow squeezed out of my grip and darted to the street. April and I quickly followed the dog as she was running at full speed and blazing down the highway. Tim joined the foot race as we headed about .5 mile down the road, Belle was spotted heading up a small road into a residential community. Tim and I broke up as the road forked and ran after Belle. After 30 minutes of jogging the hills we gave up our foot race and headed back to the family who was waiting to see if we had caught Belle. We did not.



Tim, Tanya, Trent and Madison took the Prius to drive the streets looking for the Dog while April, Zach and myself rode around with the minivan. We searched the hill by car for about an hour with no luck. We stopped every car and person we could and asked if they had seen a lost puppy but had no success. Each person had told us they would "keep looking". Trent soon began addressing each passer by with the instructions to "Keep Looking". We gave up after a good 45 minutes and headed back to the house full of tears.



April and I could not sleep and decided to head back to the location the dog was last seen around midnight. The night was very long with us probably falling asleep around 2:30 AM and waking up with every sound we heard. At 5:30 AM we headed back to see if Belle was awake and looking for her breakfast. This time with more light we felt we could have a better chance of seeing her and drove each street in the neighborhood for about an hour. We had just decided to call of the search when April's phone rang with the news "I have your dog".



About 2.5 miles from our original position Belle was found last night but could not be caught. The 'finder' of Belle told us that Bell had come back in the morning and was able to use some canned beef to lure her close enough to read her tags. We were very happy to be coming home with our puppy. Belle is very tired today as it appears she did not sleep much either last night.