Chasing Deer

One weekend we went out to visit a friend who lives in the country. His place is surrounded by quite thick woods that he has cut a number of trails through. Our dog hates to be on the leash so we decided to let her off on one of our walks as she never wanders far from us. We had been hiking for about a half hour or so when our dog, who was happily bounding along ahead of us, stopped and peered into the woods. She was very still and just stared straight into the thick brush. We called her to come back to us but she didn't make a move so we started to get worried. Suddenly she was off, quickly disappearing into the wooded area to our right. We ran up to the spot we last saw her and called her name but she was already long gone. We couldn't hear anything, not even a crackle of her stepping on fallen leaves or broken branches.

For the next 2 hours we searched and searched, calling her name in desperation. It was starting to get dark and I feared our dog was lost. We were quite sure she had been chasing a deer so had no idea how far she would have gone before realizing she was on her own. I sat for a while and just tried to listen for any sound of her, or any motion coming from the forest, but couldn't hear anything. My heart sank.

We eventually made our way back to our friend's place, no one making a sound. There was still the odd whistle or holler of her name, but we didn't dare talk to each other about our worst fears. Just after we all got seated on the deck we heard a rustle coming from the wooded area on the other side of us. We looked over just as our dog came flying out of the woods at a thousand miles and hour. She turned towards us and slid across the deck, landing at our feet. She was gasping for breath and her tongue was hanging out. We were both angry and elated and couldn't stop petting and hugging her.

The next day we realized that our dog had a large scratch that nearly caught her left eye. She also had a significant amount of fur missing from a patch off her left hind leg. Only she will know the adventures she went on that one afternoon in the woods...