weekend drama, starring briar (happy ending!)

This past weekend was, sorry to say, quite distressing for the most part. You see, Briar and the curatorial spouse took off to Condon, OR for a couple of days, and Briar had not been there one hour before he took off after some critter and was completely lost.

That was Friday. He reappeared Sunday afternoon. He had been lost in the canyons of the Oregon high desert for 48 hours. And when I say "reappeared" that's what I mean: after 2 days of hiking, driving, calling, and worrying, my husband and his friends drove back up to the ranch where they were staying, and there's a skinny, sore Briar in front of the house. He had found his way back to a house he had only seen once.

I don't ever want us to go through that again. There were coyotes in those canyons. Coyote traps. Not a lot of water. So this is what a setter looks like when he gets back home after that (you can't tell from the cellcam, but he's very very skinny):

And this is what he looks like after a much needed bath and two meals:

I think he's getting a doggie GPS system for Christmas.
Last but not least, I want to thank PetAmberAlert.com for their services. Briar found us, so we didn't actually have opportunity to see them do their whole thing, but I had signed up for their 200-person phone alert and was really pretty pleased at how they were willing to take on a dog lost in a rural, sparsely populated area.

*whew*
I hope none of you EVER go through a weekend like that one.