She's Gone.

My light is gone.  She got loose from her collar at my in-laws on Christmas day and she is now lost on hundreds of acres of hilly wooded land.

We are fighting to get her back.  Doing EVERYTHING we can possibly do to get her back.  500 mailbox fliers, 250 houses called in the area, her face on two local news stations, emails to 25 animal shelters and countless Facebook posts in less than 24 hours.

The response has been amazing.  The neighbors are fighting with us to find her. A person who specializes in search and rescue called after he got our message from the call center. He scoured the woods with us for hours today.  A neighbor tipped us off and we spotted Lucy once, but she slipped away again before DH could grab her.

I have hope that she is not suffering from being out overnight because DH said when they saw her she was wagging her tail as she sniffed trees and didn't seem upset at all---other than when they tried to grab her.  But she's out in the woods alone and I don't know how to get her back.  I have walked for ten hours until I can't feel my face from the cold wind or my ankles from walking up wooded hills.  But I would do it ten times again to get her back.

I can't put it in words.  To love a dog so much and then to wonder if you've lost that love for good.  There's so much guilt.  So much worry.  She's not a dog- she's my sign that I can be happy.  If she's already gone what does that mean?

I don't know if there's a God.  In fact, as I drove around looking for Lucy this morning I told the empty space next to me in the car that I am pretty sure there isn't.  But I also said that if I was wrong bringing Lucy back to me would be such a simple thing- a tiny thing in the scheme of its grand existence. And yet for me it would be my fishes and loaves and walking on water and every other story I was told when I was little. My miracle.  If there's something out there in the universe couldn't it love me enough to do this simple thing for us?

I don't think DH and I will find Lucy.  I believe that her best shot is stumbling across a kind neighbor who will lure her with treats.  And so I have to put my faith in the kindness of strangers to love my girl as much as I do because DH and I live an hour away.

I want to pray, but I genuinely believe that if I do I will have my heart and spirit crushed again with bad news.  So I am pleading for people who can to do it to pray for Lucy.  She is a wonderful girl and she doesn't deserve anything but good things.