What a question!!! I hardly know where to begin ...
The need to cope with a totally unexpected crisis was suddenly thrust upon me Monday afternoon. Since then, I've been running myself ragged. My husband has been in a hospital 40 miles from home and I needed to be there with him as much as possible, while doing his chores at home in addition to my own. It didn't help that we acquired a new family member (the 4 legged kind) only 3 weeks ago who came from a very bad situation and is not yet fully housebroken and has a great deal of separation anxiety. My concern about my husband added to the stress.
I finally brought him home yesterday afternoon and everything is now fine. The story of his homecoming is not without excitement of its own, though.
Of our two older dogs, Renny is a jumper, but if he gets loose, all he does is run around the house trying to get back in. Sam is another story - he hasn't figured out that he could jump a fence easier than Renny because he's bigger, which is a very good thing because if he gets loose, he will take off and is impossible to catch. Yesterday, we had two men from the fence company putting an extra foot of wires on top of the fence because my husband is determined to keep Renny in (my opinion is that Renny will have no problem jumping that extra foot, but who am I to argue with the boss?). Anyhow, I was getting ready to leave to fetch my husband at the hospital when Sam got out. I chased him in the car - that's the only hope to get him back because he loves car rides and will jump in at any opportunity. When I caught up with him, he came running over but I couldn't reach the pasenger door to open it for him, so I got out and walked around. During that instant, he spotted a neighbor's chicken and all bets were off. He chased the chicken, finally caught it, and headed for home, carrying it in his mouth, with me in hot pursuit. The men saw him coming and opened the gate hoping he'd go in. It looked like that's where he was headed, but somehow the chicken slipped out of his grasp and the chicken ran in. Sam followed in hot pursuit and the men closed the gate as I was getting there. I ran in the house and called Sam from the back door (which opens to the fenced area) and ... it was a miracle ... he came running into the house ... without the chicken. The men searched for the chicken, found it cowering under a bush, picked it up, examined it, and said it was fine. The chicken had been totally silent until one of the men picked it up - then it set up a howl that I think all of WikiTree could have heard. They put the chicken over the fence back into its own yard and I was finally able to go to get my sweetie pie. There's an epilogue to this - after the past several days of nonstop activity, the chicken caper was the last straw and I was VERY frazzled. I figured I'd be the best sight in the world to my husband when I arrived to bring him home, but the first thing he said was that I look like I've been rode hard and put up wet .... Is that the kind of thing any man should say to his wife????? He did redeem himself by immediately adding that he loves me very much, though, and I'm so happy to have him back in full health that I'm even willing to forgive his mortal sin.