30 minutes of hell

Shortly after taking this picture I lost Jake, one minute there on the path in front of me, the next, he’d gone round the corner and instead of waiting as he has always done if I’m lagging behind, he disappeared.

All throughout our walk in the woods we could hear gunshots from the river in the valley below, damn “huntsmen” exercising their civil rights to shoot harmless ducks. It’s happened before, but today was excessive, again and again, more gunfire. Jake was twitchy (terrified of fireworks and thunder) but seemed ok, not clinging to me for reassurance so I carried on as normal, until he disappeared, clearly having decided enough was enough and he was done with it.

He had been seen, stationary, in the cemetery which we often walk through on the way home, but he was no longer there...

Have you ever tried to think like a dog? To look around and wonder “if I was terrifed where would I go?”

30 minutes of wandering around, calling & whistling and asking every Tomas, Dirk & Hans if they’d seen a white retriever and the blind panic was over. Somehow Jake had got himself houdinilike through the (usually) closed cemetery gate, across the road, along the street, remembering to take the left bend over another road, and the right bend after that, past a noisy building site and home, where he couldn’t get through our closed gate but my lovely neighbours (who knew he was missing) rescued him.

Thank you to everyone who helped me this morning and a pox on all those thoughtlessly shooting innocent wildlife, may your duck à l’orange be full of lead.