History

Something odd happened to me a few weeks ago so I wrote it down and planned to share it with you. Forgot all about it until now.

Sitting in the window of a busy coffee shop on the Upper West Side. I saw a small, curly-coated, black dog streaking at top speed up the center of the north bound lanes of Broadway. I gasped but couldn't do anything. Not true. I could have abandoned my two bags and coat and run out after it. I might have caught up in time to see it flattened by an unwitting delivery truck. Or I might have run aimlessly around for long, cold minutes seeing nothing at all. I'm not very fast. Certainly not as fast as an armful of highly motivated pooch.

I waited, fingers crossed, breath held, tears standing in my eyes for the inevitable human pursuit. In the brief flash as he passed I saw a collar and blue tags shine against his coat.

No one came.

No swift-heeled child, no panicked senior citizen, no lithe young man or angry mother. No one at all.

There are, I suppose, plenty of perfectly reasonable explanations. The dog might already have changed directions so his pursuers were off on the wrong heading. Perhaps he'd escaped unnoticed from a sidewalk tethering or mishandled apartment door. Just maybe he does this all the time and is known to wriggle home safe by nightfall.

I can't shake, though, the deathly feeling of a complete lack of pursuit. It's no secret that I would have followed my dog, distraught, to the ends of the earth. I was fortunate in that she held the reciprocal conviction so we were rarely far removed from each other. I know plenty of dogs who, love for their people undiminished, are easily distracted and prone to adventure. And I know without a doubt that their people - terrified, furious, shocked - would be pelting down the street, unstoppable in their search if this misfortune befell their family.

Oh Little Dog Lost, you broke my heart. Come home safe.

And soon.