I wish I'd known...

If you've been visiting for awhile, you may recall me lamenting about the neighbors chihuahuas who manage to escape their backyard and run through the neighborhood. Somehow I always managed to be lingering by a window when Boots and Baby would make their mad dash for freedom.

This morning, still working on my first cup of coffee, wearing ridiculous but comfy pajama pants, a mismatched top and a bird's nest of curls, I glanced out my front window and saw the dangerous duo on another freedom run. Boots, the chocolate brown ball of silliness just runs to me when I call him. He's the guilty, sensitive one immediately regretting his decision. But Baby? Baby always has to run.

I run out of the house, looking like something I can't even describe, in mismatched crocs, to nab Baby. After chasing him through s few neighbors front yards and amusing several teenagers on their way to school, I collect him. He licks at my chin like a goof, shaking like a leaf because that's what Baby does. As I'm quietly scolding him, laughing at myself and feeling horrified about my not ready for street attire, I whisper into Baby's ear, "I know you like to explore, but it's gonna be the death of you one day if you're not careful, Mister."

Later this afternoon, around 4pm, I an wandering by the window, on the phone with a co-worker about a project. I see Baby, making a dash across the street. Again. Unable to just hang up...I try to rush my co-worker off the phone, to go retrieve Baby. Just a five minute delay. I figured, he wouldn't get too far.

Baby was hit and killed probably around 4:15 or so. A neighbor, got the license plate of the person who hit him, but I'm not sure what the family plans to do. We gathered Baby, who looked like he'd just had too much to drink, and we brought him home in a box. As I sat there, crying on my neighbors patio with them...I wondered...what I might have been able to change in that five minutes. I wondered if I hadn't given him some sort of bad school aged jinx, warning him as I had this morning while I whispered in his ear.

I took the family to the Vet Hospital and sat with a very distraught thirteen year old. We're gonna make him an urn and remember his as the crazy, rebellious little explorer he was. I wish I was five minutes faster, and I wish they'd been a little more mindful...

Sleep tight lil Baby. 9/2003 - 11/2007