Disaster Averted - Miracles Do Happen

This is our dog Ellie. 

She is approximately 10 months old,  and she resides in our backyard.  The kids and I love to be outside on the backporch which doubles as Ellie's homeplace.  We eat snacks out there, we read out there, we talk on the phone out there, etc. 


In Ellie's defense, she doesn't know the difference between a chew toy we bought and left on the porch for her on purpose and the book we accidentally left out there. 

This is what Ellie can do to a book:

Gogurt bought this book with some hard-earned money and although he had read it several times, he was upset nonetheless.  Upset with Ellie, with himself, with his sister who for some reason caught the brunt of his frustration.  (It could have been her yelling out the back door, "Be quiet, I can hear you ALL THE WAY in here!) Not quite the sympathy he was looking for I guess. 

Fast forward to late last night. Sarah and I were watching Freaky Friday on ABC Family.  Gogurt didn't want to watch it with us, and he couldn't play the Wii or computer so he decided to go outside with Ellie (maybe to offer forgiveness?) 

He came in looking like he saw a ghost.  "Ellie has puppy!!!" he yelled.  I'm sure we were all imaging what Ellie had done earlier in the day to the book.  Oh, God help us-Ellie has puppy. 

This puppy:

Poptart has slept with puppy every night since she got him from Santa when she was about 18 months old.  Puppy has been a part of our family, and if something ever happened to him I think we would all cry. 

When I heard Ellie had puppy, I imagined the worst - his head ripped off, his 4 legs strewn over the 4 corners of our yard, and that tail that Poptart rubs chewed to bits. 


I got from the couch to the backyard in 0.3 seconds and thankfully was glad to see puppy all in one piece, for now.  We had to get puppy out of Ellie's grips.  And of course, Ellie thought it was all a game so she was running like lightning past Gogurt and me. 

Poptart came to the backdoor but looked like she was going to faint, so I told her to go back inside and Gogurt and I would take care of it.  Please God, let me get this stuffed dog out of this real dog's mouth.  My daughter's mental state depends on it!

It all happened so fast, but Ellie finally dropped puppy and after screaming, "Get it, get it, get it" Gogurt pounced on it like a lion hunting its prey.  I'm not embarassed to say I sat Indian-style on my backporch holding puppy to my chest rocking back and forth chanting, "Thank you, Lord." 

When I entered the house, puppy in tow, Poptart was curled up in the fetal position on the couch crying.  I can't tell you the relief I felt when I was able to hand her puppy, still all in one piece.  A little wet, but in one piece. 

She was so emotionally drained, she declared there was no way she could sleep by herself.  I laid her down beside her daddy and she went sound asleep with puppy right there beside her. 

(We are still unsure how puppy ever got out there in the first place.  Poptart is very careful about not taking puppy outside, so that part is a mystery)

After the rescue, I was still on an adrenaline rush and wasn't quite ready to lie down yet.  That's when the second miracle of the night happened. 

Gogurt and I went back outside and stayed up for the next hour talking, at first about the disaster that almost had happened right before our eyes, and then discussing everything from school to friends to girls.  We talked, laughed, and had the absolute best time together we've had in a very, very long time. 

Are these miracles equal to the water-to-wine or crossing-the-sea-on-dry-land miracles?  Nah, probably not.  But to me and my family, they sure did feel like it.