So, yesterday afternoon we noticed Winston hadn’t been around. We checked all his sleeping spots, called and called, and he was nowhere around. We then proceeded to alert the animal shelter, the Facebook Lost Dog Militia, anyone we could think of. We drove all over, calling for him, and then had to stop because we were hosting a dinner party last night that couldn’t be cancelled last minute. 

We were all pretty sad, thinking about our poor fancy dog out in the hundred degree heat, lost and unable to get home. Dinner as served, and conversation was lively amoung the adults at the dining table. Halfway through the meal, Stinky comes in, saying, “Mom, I think I know where Winston is! I heard thumping under the couch!” 

Now, we had just purchased a new sleeper style sofa. This one, to give you a visual. 

image

Underneath the two narrow cushions, that part slides out and it makes a large sleeping surface. You just collapse the top and push it back in when you are finished with it. 

Which is what I did early in the day Winnie was lost. I just shoved the sleeper part right up under the couch, and encountering resistance, assumed it was a HotWheel or a Lego, and gave a final hard push. Voila! The sofa was closed!

So anyway, when Stinky comes in and says he heard thumping, all I could think of is how much Winston loves snug spaces, and how I’d given that sofa such a rough final push. I couldn’t go look. I just couldn’t. My friend who is in town, crisis manager that she is, goes and looks. All the people in the dining room hear is screaming. It wasn’t sounding good. Our dinner guests are very, very quiet and very, very still. I tell my husband to go assess the damage, because I just knew I had killed or severely maimed our dog.

Right about then, little Winnie comes trotting around the corner, happy as a lark, tongue hanging out. He was totally fine. A little dehydrated, a little freaked out, but totally okay. Even though he’d been closed in a space so tight he couldn’t bark for about 6 hours. My friend was screaming with joy, which for her sounds a lot like getting dental surgery with no anesthesia, I guess. 

He got to sleep in the big bed last night, and I am spending my morning rescinding the alarms I sounded yesterday. Still not sure exactly how things like this actually happen in my life. I do know that  will ALWAYS check the sofa sleeper crawl space every time I close it, from here on out.Â