OUR MUG SHOTS

My name is Winston and I’m four months old. My big sister, Li’l Red is three years old. We live with our two sisters, Mina (3 yrs) & Dixie (9 mo). Mom and Dad moved us way out into the country about three month go. We live about a half mile from the big road. We have a huge yard to play in which we do several times a day. We get to run without leashes and sniff all kinds of sniffable stuff. The only time we leave the yard is to visit our close neighbor, Mrs. Jessie Mae who is 99 years old. (I like numbers; can you tell?) Sometimes her son, Mr. James, who is our other neighbor, works on his vehicles and we go over there and bark and bark at his tools. It’s a lot of fun.

When Mom calls us we go in…mostly cause we think we can con her out of treats. But she usually tricks us and ends up making us stay inside for a while. That is when we nap to get energy to play outside again later.

Yesterday was just a normal day ’til Li’l Red smelled somethin weird. She put her nose to the ground and then she started running really fast down the road. I thought it looked like a really fun new game so I followed her lead. We went on a very long run, stopping every once in a while for Red to teach me how to sniff those funny looking marks in the soft dirt. Red says they are deer tracks. I hope when we find this “deer” it wants to play!

After a while we were very far from home. I could only see a lot of plants that were really tall, and not much nice soft grass at all. There were lots of sticky things getting caught on my long fur. I didn’t mind, though; I was having too much fun. We could hear Mom far away. She was calling us. She sounded kind of mad and worried and sweet all at the same time. We knew she was a human so she would be ok without us for a while, so we kept on our hunt. Suddenly, we couldn’t hear Mom calling us. (We found out later she was on the phone and online getting lots of help lined up to look for us.)

About 5 hours later we decided we were really tired and thirsty. And we still never caught up with that deer thing with the weird paws. I started to be a little afraid because it was gonna get dark soon. But Red was brave. She sniffed the air and sniffed the ground (her sniffer works REALLY REALLY GOOD). She took us home a different way through a HUGE plowed field. Then we saw Mom. She was at the edge of the woods looking at the deer tracks and our tracks that went from our front yard, way down our dirt lane, and off into the woods. Red called to Mom but she didn’t hear us, so I helped call her. Then she heard and saw us.

Mom usually doesn’t move very fast because her knees hurt a lot, but yesterday she must have forgotten they hurt cause she was going really fast to see us and was smiling and crying and calling our names. She let us inside after she picked us up and checked us all over. We drank lots and lots of water and then we rested in Dad’s recliner. I don’t remember much after that cause my eyes kept wanting to sleep. I did hear Dad get home from work and Mom told him we had a 5 hour afternoon adventure and she nearly had a heart attack. (I don’t know what a heart attack is…but I’m pretty sure it means she loves us so much her heart wants to explode.)