January 28, 2007 8:52pm

I can't find my mother. This worries me. She's always home on Saturday nights and she isn't answering the phone. She doesn't carry a cell phone, so it's impossibl to track her down. I immediately start thinking the worst and work myself into a hissy of it.

I'm sure she'll turn up.

Anyway, I've been thinking a lot about how isolated I am and how it was that way for me even as a kid and as a teenager.

Then I got Abigail, my Golden Retriever. I was 12 and full of acne and awkwardness, she was 8 weeks old and had trouble controlling her stopping when she'd slide across the tarazzo floor in my parents' house.

She was my buddy. Wherever I went, she went. Whatever I did, she did. She was a good listener and a wonderful friend. If I was upset and crying in my room, she would run and get my mom.

Abby had a few behavior "issues", though. One was that we never broke her of jumping up on people until the arthritis in her hind legs got so bad that she just couldn't do it anymore. Probably our fault. Her other problem was that she was terrified of thunderstorms. She would be a wreck, and everyone else in the house would be going crazy because she wouldn't leave us alone. If it was nighttime, she would climb into my mom's bed and try to sit on her face. Abby would get really frustrated and try to dig herself a hole in the tile or tarazzo floors in the house. She failed miserably.

We finally had to start giving her tranquilizers when the thunderstorm approached. A whole pill turned out to be too much because she was zonked out for 48 hours. We tried a quarter of a pill, but the problem there was that she was conscious enough to know there was a thunderstorm, but didn't have the physical energy to freak out. This caused her to have an anxiety attack. Ever seen a dog have an anxiety attack? It looks just like when a human has one, but there's more drool.

Half a pill seemed to do the trick.

When I first got her, we kept her in a cage when nobody was home. My friends would tell me how cruel it was that we put her in a cage, but she didn't seem to mind it. When she would get sleepy, she would just climb into it at night herself as if it was her own little apartment. When she got older we stopped using the cage and she just slept wherever she landed for the night.

For the most part, she was a good dog. But when she was really young she liked to take off any chance she got. She always ran to the end of the driveway, put her front paws in front of her to go into a sliding stop, and then turn around and run back to the house.

It became a routine. I'd come home from school, put her on her leash, open the front door and she would take off like a bat out of hell to the end of the driveway, turn around, run back to me, and we'd go for a walk down the road. I lived on a dirty road with woods all around so there was plenty of fun places to explore with her.

The one day, when she was about 6 months old, the routine changed. I came home, put her on her leash, opened the door, she took off.....and kept going.

I saw her reach the end of the driveway with no plans of stopping. She made a quick right and started running down the road. I went chasing after her and yelling "Abigail! Abigail! Come back here!". Now I was starting to worry.

I ran all the way to the end of the road and I couldn't find her. She was missing. I was in a complete panic. I started running through the woods to find her, but I didn't see her there either. I ran back to the house, thinking that maybe she found her way back there, but no such luck.

I started crying and slowly walking down the road in the direction she ran. Paw prints! I saw paw prints in the dirt! I followed the paw prints almost to the end of the road where they suddenly stopped. They stopped right where some tire marks were. Oh no! She's been dognapped!

Ran back to the house with tears streaming down my face. I called the local police department and said something like this.... "Hi...I...um...::hiccup:: I was walking my...um ::hiccup::: dog in the dirt road and she...."
Dispatcher: Oh, honey, did you lose your dog?
Me: Ye-yes.
Dispatcher: We have her here. Can you come get her?
Me: O-O-Okay. ::hiccup:::

So I took another leash of hers and walked over to the police station. I walk in the front door and the woman at the desk directs me to the back.

Now, you have to understand that I grew up in a really small town. In area, it's less than 1 square mile. The police department has 11 officers. I know all of them.

She takes me into the back where the holding cells are. Not dog cages...human holding cells. They had two holding cells. In one was a very angry looking teeanger, in the other was someone sitting in a chair, and there was Abigail laying all curled up on the cot.

She saw me and slowly got off the cot and waited at the cell door for the lady to open it. She had her head down and she walked toward me with her head down and tail between her legs but wagging nervously.

Apparently, what happened was just as she took off down the road, a police office was driving through. She managed to catch up to his car and he took her back to the police station. They didn't have any cages for dogs, so they had to put her in a holding cell. Unfortunately, both holding cells were occupied with people waiting to be processed or taken to county jail or whatever it is that happens with them. So they put her in the one cell and when the guy got up off the cot she climbed onto it and wouldn't get off. The police just gave the man a chair and declared them cellmates until I came to retrieve the Retriever.

After a long lecture on the walk home, I think she understood that running away was not acceptable.

She never even went so much as out of the back yard without someone with her.

See, and who says jail isn't a deterrent?