The recovery story, as told by the finders!

And here's my story of what happened Sunday, for posterity's sake. Or
we can Rashomon the rest.

Dawn and I were just getting up and about ready to make the bed. I was
dawdling, putting on slippers or something, so Dawn started opening
the curtains while she was waiting. She noticed a dog coming into our
driveway, which we share with our neighbor's Becky Morrison and Geoff
Jackson, and Dawn mentioned to me that the dog didn't seem to have an
accompanying human. I wanted to rush down right away to check it out,
but Dawn insisted on making the bed first.

By the time I got downstairs, the dog had wandered into Becky and
Geoff's back yard, digging in the dirt and leaves by the fence. I
called and made smooching noises, which seemed to make the dog wary of
me. She dashed to the back of the yard and behind the garage. There's
a smidgen of fence, though, behind the garage and between our two
yards, so the dog was now blocked in with nowhere else to escape.

By this time Geoff had noticed that I was wandering around his back
yard, so he came out and asked me what was the deal. I pointed out the
dog. It seemed to have mud splashed on its head and eye, or maybe the
eye was injured. We couldn't really tell.

We thought maybe we could coax it out with some food. Geoff went
inside to get some cat food, while I stood watch, the dog and I
watching each other from opposite sides of the garage. I knelt and
made soothing cooing and smooching noises while the dog looked at me
warily and shivered. I inched closer and closer and the dog let me
scratch its shoulder without biting me, so I scooped it up gently and
backed out of the small space.

Geoff was returning with a bowl of wet food as I was carrying the dog
to our back porch. The dog scurried to the opposite corner of the
porch from us and sat & shivered some more, but was hungry enough to
scarf up the whole bowl of food. Dawn came out from the kitchen, where
she had started to make breakfast, and took one look at the dog's eye
and declared we were going to the vet immediately. She got dressed
while Geoff and I watched over the dog, then I went and got dressed
when Dawn returned.

Dawn and Geoff discussed having seen fliers and a notice on the
listerv about a missing dog, so Geoff volunteered to do some research
to find the owners while Dawn and I drove to Friendship Animal
Hospital in Tenleytown, which we knew was an emergency hospital
because we had taken our cat Evie there once when our regular vet
Union Vet Clinic was closed for the night.

We were on our way there when you called us and suggested we go to
Rockville instead. Frankly, we were just the tiniest bit lost trying
to find Friendship, so we were not only relieved to be in touch with
the owners, and to find out her name is Penelope, but we were thankful
that you gave us actual directions to an actual hospital. Whew!

We got to the hospital and they took her back and then y'all arrived
and met Dawn and me, so you know the rest.

It all just happened to work out, I think. We were actually supposed
to have our nieces for the weekend, but that all got canceled because
of the snow. We probably wouldn't have been getting up and making the
bed at that time if we'd had the nieces, so it was lucky that Dawn
spotted Penelope when she did. And it just so happens that I went out
after we made the bed, at the same time Penelope was in the back yard
and the only place for her to run away was behind the garage, where
she was trapped and I was able to nab her. I'm glad it all worked out,
but it was just luck rather than any actual skill on our part.

Anyway, again, I'm glad Penelope is doing better and we hope to see
her soon. Take care.