"Dad, where's Miya?"

We left the mountains yesterday morning. My son, 4 dogs, and I. Greta, a 75# German Shepherd. Maddie, a 12# Chihuahua mix. Napoleon, a 11# terrier mix. And Miya, a 6# Chihuahua. 

After 45 minutes of twisty mountain roads driving a #30k pound, 40' long box, we had finally made it to a 4 lane road and my son says, "Dad, where's Miya?" 

Talk about an Oh E36 M3 moment. I pulled over and we went through every crook and cranny in the RV. No Miya. She must have snuck out the door while we were loading and gone on a walkabout and we left her behind. How the hell had we missed that she wasn't in the RV. While she is usually quiet as a church mouse, she is always right up front in the middle of things or wanting to sleep on the dash. While we were looking for her in the RV, my sister and BIL pulled over and we hopped in their car to go back and look for her. 

Miya has a habit of wandering. If you don't keep an eye on her she will go from smell to smell and just keep going. If you call her she looks at you all surprised like how did you get way over there and comes running. By the time we made it back to the farm, she would have been wandering for a little over two hours in a rural area full of Great Pyrenees guarding sheep, woods, fields full of tall grass, and wild animals. She is also about the size of a large rabbit which makes her prime picking for a large hawk or coyote. We checked the barn, shop, house, mobile home, tractor shed, walked the fields, and woods, and even talked to the neighbors. No Miya. After an hour, we headed back to the RV with the intention of searching it again and driving it back to the farm to spend another night hoping that she would show up.

At this point, I figured she was either miles away, animal food, or had fallen in the creek and washed downstream. I was not a happy camper.

If you are familiar with Chihuahuas, they are one-person dogs and I was Miya's person. If I'm home she is attached to me like a limpet. If I'm sitting she wants to be in my lap or sitting on my shoulder and if she isn't already there, she's staring at me trying to figure out how to get there. When an animal is that devoted to you, it's almost impossible to not return that devotion. The trip back to the RV was long. All I could think about were all the possibilities and how bad most of them were. 

Back at the RV, Joseph and I started the search again. About 30 seconds into looking, I found her. She had apparently been standing on the back of one of the couches and had fallen between it and the wall and couldn't get out. When my son looked there the first time, she must have been under the couch trying to get out the front side and he didn't see her and as usual, she didn't make a sound. When I looked and called her, she popped out and looked at me like, "Where have you been, Dad? I've been back here for hours now."

So, thank the Good Lord the crisis was averted. 

It's surprising how much you can love a little bit of fluff.  

We once left a cat 6 hours away during a household  move. Three days later my wife loaded up three kids and went back after it at our old neighbors house. We are cat people!

In reply to TRoglodyte :

Cats are smarter than Miya. I would have still made the drive but I would have been less worried about a cat. Miya would wander off without a care in the world. Self-preservation is not in her vocabulary.

I doubt she would run from a lion. She'd be like Tommy Lee Jones in MIB and stand there shouting, "Eat Me!!"

Yikes, glad she was okay and safe.  Had a few scares myself where a pet found somewhere hidden to take a nap, and we couldn't find them for a while.

I love a happy ending. 

Ok, that's brilliant.  I love a happy ending.

I promise, I'm not trying to one-up anything, but our family has had its fair share of this kind of thing and I tell these stories only to relate, not to take away from the happiness of your story.

I remember when I was young (likely 5 or so) we had a cat named Moldy - named for the fact that she was colored like something that had mold on it.  Never saw a cat colored like this.  She was a tortoise-shell, but instead of the black/brown/white, she was this odd greenish/tan/white with a white goatee.  We had a slide-in camper on the truck and we stopped in Rehoboth Beach one night to do the boardwalk.  Moldy was happy curled up on the bed so we parked on the street and took off for some fun.  While walking back to the camper/truck, we saw Moldy walking in the street.  Holy crap, how did she get out?  Did she claw her way through a screen?  Did we not close the door? We spent forever trying to call her, passersby joined in to help, the Police started to help.  We thought we had her cornered, and one guy actually got a brief hand on a leg but she took off under the boardwalk.  We finally gave up.  My sister and I were crying as we walked back to the camper.... where we found Moldy peacefully sleeping on the bed.  We realized we just spent hours chasing a look-alike cat.

My sister and BIL found their outside cat squashed on the road one day on a walk.  They scooped him up and tried to figure out how to tell their boys (who were pretty young at the time) that Sonata had died.  They told them that evening, they cried, and they buried Sonata in the flowerbed.  The next day, Sonata showed up at the door meowing to be let in.  They found a random look-alike cat that had been hit on the road and assumed it was Sonata.  The older boy figured it out right away, but the younger boy was pretty troubled for a while thinking that it was a zombie cat.

I spend the summers on a Canadian lake that is completely wilderness.  My dog, Mopsy, disappeared one day.  She did that some days but she would always come back at night.  This time she was gone for three days and we started to worry.  She never missed a boat trip, and since we had the only classic 65hp Merc on the lake, she would come running within a couple minutes of firing up that motor.  Alas, no-show.  We went about 7 miles up the lake for an island lunch.  Not long after we got there, we saw a Beaver swimming across from the mainland toward us, except it wasn't a beaver.  It was Mopsy.  She came up on shore, shook off, and jumped in the boat refusing to leave it.  None of us could believe it.  We still have no explanation.  She either walked about 25 miles of shoreline, bays, and swamps, or she swam for 7 miles, or she took a straight line in which she would have encountered four shear granite cliffs of 50' or more.  No clue.  In our family, we still use the phrase "if dogs could talk" as a phrase that means "I have no idea."

Me:  "How do you solve this math problem?"
Mom:  "If dogs could talk."

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Re the Mopsy story.

I jokingly said that if we didn't find her she would show up at home in Goose Creek after 350 miles and 6 months but she would be a changed dog. 

As a child, my family was taking a road trip and dropped our family black lab off at my uncle's house on the way. Uncle lived about an hour and a half from our house if you drove to the peninsula by bridge. If you took the land route, it was probably a 2 hour drive. When we came home from the vacation a week later, our dog was home waiting for us like nothing ever happened. My uncle wasn't sure when he left, but we do know he stayed there with him for at least two or three days. How does a dog cover over 100 miles in under five days, with no idea where he started?