Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed.

I’ve been dealing with some odd hours lately and coming home and leaving home in the dark is starting to affect my mental status I believe. I noticed early last week that I hadn’t seen Molly the dog around the house at night when I’d come home or early in the morning when I’ve trudged off to work. Knowing that as a farm dog she pretty much has the run of anywhere she cares to go I hadn’t given it much thought until I got a phone call Sunday afternoon from the neighbors. Seems that Molly was down chasing cows and horses with the neighbor dog and creating all sorts of trouble.

Max and I loaded up in the truck and drove down to the neighbors. There in the pasture was the neighbor’s dog and a black and white dog running free and wild. I walked up to the fence and yelled for her and the dog came bounding up and under the fence at a dead run. I reached down to pet the dog and took her to the truck, loading her in the back seat. As we started out of the driveway Max said to me, “Dad, I don’t think this is Molly. Our dog has a blue collar and this dog has a green one!”

Well obviously I’m smart enough to know what my dog looks like and I explained the collar situation by telling Max that obviously the collar had faded and now was a light green blue color. We arrived home and unloaded Molly out of the truck and watched as she ran around the yard like crazy, stopping to lift her leg to mark her territory….Wait…Molly just lifted her leg….You know Max, Molly sure seems shorter than I remember…

I reached down to take a look at this imposters collar and noticed that “HE” was wearing an Earlham Vet Clinic tag, and I knew right then that we had a problem because Molly gets her shots over at Stuart. I turned to Max and said, “You know, I’m not sure this is Molly.” The boy just shot me a look and said “I told you this wasn’t Molly.”

So what would we do? Clearly I had committed a theft of someone else’s dog who was trespassing on someone else’s property; or was what I had done called theft, or perhaps even worse; a “doggery”? Would I try to fool the rest of the family with this imposter dog? Should I simply wait and hope that the new dog ran away?

No, I did the only thing I could think of. I loaded the dog up and returned him down the road where he started from. With Max making sure I knew that this dog had a different colored collar. There is nothing worse than returning a dog that isn’t the neighbors back to the neighbors house and sneaking away. I suppose it is the same thing as raking your leaves into the neighbors yard, but I wouldn’t want to be caught doing that either.

Still no word on Molly the dog. Perhaps she’ll see this and decided to venture back home. See you next week..Remember, we’re all in this together.