Lost Dog

Alfie was lost yesterday morning. I got into a bit of a panic. I had taken Carol to work, got back home, had breakfast and went upstairs. Poppy was on the bed, but Alfie was nowhere to be found. I looked in all the usual places, for example, under the bed. I went round the house several times, but no response. Generally, if you call him, Alfie will appear, so this time it was unusual. I was beginning to get concerned. Had he got out? I'm certain he hadn't, and not out of the front door. He has run off, down the street, but never goes far, and then he'll come back when you call, but he has no sense of road safety, so he'd get run over, which is what caused me to panic. If he wasn't out the front, he must be out the back. 

He loves the garden, and has a routine of checking things out, first going to the neighbour's fence on the left and going to the place where their dog barks at him (to such an extent that the fence begins to move horribly. It's a beast of a dog and I'm sure it could do a lot of damage to both our dogs, if given half a chance. Our neighbours never repremand their dog, call it in or stop it in any way.) He then goes to the ancient garden shed and disappears inside (the door is off and really needs repairing. It's not our property, our landlord should look after it more, including the fence. I have already mentioned this to the letting agency, but nothing has been done about it. Lastly, he goes to the fence at the end of the garden and appears (you'll laugh!) to be looking through the slats and out into the gap at the back of the fence. Anyway, I called him several more times, but no response. Then, after a while, I decided to look over the fence. As a sort of last resort. I had to stand on a chair, and there he was, the other side of the fence, in the space, between the fence and the trees and bushes which line the Redway which runs behind our garden. There is a gate in the fence, which we rarely use, as it is quite difficult to get open, and the trees make it quite difficult to gan access to it the other side, but this time I was really desperate to reach Alfie. I had my slippers on, so I didn't want to walk out onto the rough ground, so I went back into the house to put on my shoes, and then went round the front of the house and along the road and through the gap in the houses and onto the Redway. I had to walk quite a way before I reached the back of our house and get in to where Alfie was. He looked at me so helplessly, he'd got out and didn't know how to get back, however he'd done it. I had to call to him, and he crawled through the gap and I managed to pick him up. He was really licking me and almost saying 'thank you' for rescuing him. I managed to get back through the fence and took him in the house, having shut the gate securely and closing the glass sliding door into the house. I had to keep the door closed all day, as I still wasn't sure how he'd got out.