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So this is our family dog, Abby. She's a pointer mix. Pretty smart dog...most times. She has her moments. So Cindy and the kids take her for a walk recently to a nearby park with a sizeable off-leash area. Kids are running down the path playing, Abby is chasing around like she normally does. She finds a small dog to run with and takes off with the dog over a slope down towards the river area. No big deal - she always does this and eventually returns looking for one of us. Except this time...she doesn't come back into sight. Minutes pass, no sign of her. Cindy starts talking with other people that are coming by with their dogs and asking if they've seen Abby. She exchanges phone numbers with a few people, and one woman offers to meet back at the parking lot if she comes across Abby. I don't know exactly how long it was, but probably 10 minutes or so.
Eventually a ranger is driving thru the area so Cindy flags him down. She starts to tell him that she's lost our dog, when the Ranger cuts her short and asks "your dog is white with black markings?".
"Yes"!
"Well she's sitting in the parking lot beside your car"!
Sure enough - a return to the parking lot finds Abby sitting beside the car and not moving. Even when she sees Cindy and the kids and they call her, she didn't move. Upon getting close, it's found that Abby is shaking because she was scared from losing her family. Needless to say, Abby was just as happy to have her family come back to her as Cindy and the kids were to have found her. But give the dog credit for tracking down the car and waiting there until someone came back to her.
Now I hide on Abby occassionally when we're out at an off-leash area, just to see if she can find me. And she always does, and she always becomes more careful of keeping aware of where I am. So I've told Cindy that she shouldn't worry - it's unlikely that Abby will venture that far out of sight again, but even if she does, there's a good chance she'll figure out how to track us down, even if it's returning to somewhere she knows we'll go ourselves! So all is good, even if it did cause a few moments of...anxiousness.
