Sunday with Peanut by Geoff Reed

Peanut

I had just put down the newspaper and took the last sip of my morning coffee when a chocolate-brown flash caught my eye. The sight was not lost on my two dogs either, as they jumped to the front window, barking excitedly. I grabbed a leash and my car keys from the garage and knew that today was not going to go as planned.

At first, the stray dog wouldn’t come near me as I approached and called him. Instead, he took off running up the hill, cars passing without even slowing. I jumped in the car and spotted him in a front yard a few blocks away. I opened up the car door and he approached, gave me a sniff and jumped into my lap. “Come on, Junior,” I said, “I bet your people went to church and you took off, didn’t ya?”

He was an unneutered male, wearing a collar without a tag and a little grey in the face. Back at home, I put a rope on him, tied it around a tree and put a bowl of water in the shade. My wife Melissa named him Peanut.

About noon, when no one came around looking for him, I posted an ad on Craigslist and a lost dog website. We made up a few handmade signs and posted them down on the Harpeth Greenbelt Trail and telephone polls.

Not wanting to leave him alone, we took him on some errands with us. He loved riding in the car with his head sticking out the window. I had been expecting my cell phone to ring at any moment, but it never did.

As darkness was settling in, we were making plans for where Peanut could spend the night in the house. I thought I would keep him for a few days if need be and then contact a local dog rescue where he could be fostered and hopefully find a new home. He had been trying all day to dominate our two dogs, and it wasn’t going to work having him join our small pack.

At some point, I looked outside the window and saw a middle-aged lady standing across the street, looking at one of the “Found” signs we had posted. She looked like she had had a hard day – or a hard month.

Suddenly, my phone buzzed. I asked the lady standing across the street a few questions about the dog she had lost, and her description matched up with the one now sitting on our couch. If there was any doubt in my mind, it was quickly erased when Peanut did a lively happy dance as soon as he saw her through the glass door, approaching the house.

For some reason, probably because of the lady’s distraught appearance, I decided to skip the friendly advice I was planning on offering about fixing your dog and getting a tag for him.

While I was busy cutting a rope out in the garage for a makeshift leash, the woman told Melissa that she had been very worried and distraught when she arrived home and he was missing. Her husband had recently died, and the last thing he uttered was “Be sure to take good care of Peanut.”

I guess some dogs just fit their name perfectly.