Moving Houses and Chasing Dogs

With Laura and James moving into their new house with their 2 doggies in tow, it is eerily reminiscent of our move to Myerwood many years ago.

In 1979 Cindy and I moved onto Myerwood from Plano on a Thursday. (Laura and James - 6 streets over on Gulfstream coming from temporary residence in Plano on Thursday.) The last "items" we moved that day that had turned into night were our 2 pooches Billy Bob,the cocker, and Precia, the cockapoo who I had married into but had begged to adopt because she was, well, precious. (Laura and James have their two corgis Henry and Norman who James also begged to adopt.) Let's just hope these similarities stop here.

Back then, dogs stayed outside in the backyard. That's just the way it was. Only foo-foo dogs stayed indoors. At least that's the way I was raised in the Grove. So, that first night on Myerwood I "walked the property" to ensure there was fence all the way around and gave it the thumbs up. Good night Billy Bob and Precia - it was time for bed after an exhausting day of moving.

The next morning we awoke excitedly to a Friday vacation day looking forward to unpacking and setting up our new house. We go outside to feed the dogs and our hearts sank when there were no dogs to be found. In the light of day I "rewalked the property" and found a hole where the dogs had dug under the fence and escaped. Oh no.

So we hop in the car and start slowly driving the streets of our new neighborhood. No dogs. Nowhere. This was not going well. We decided to find a store where we could buy some posterboard, and came home and made "Lost Dogs" signs. We struck back out and every telephone pole we could find we nailed up our signs. We could only hope some Good Samaritan had taken them in and would bring them home to us after seeing the sign.

When we arrived back at our house there was a note taped to the front door: "We have your dogs at Hockaday School. Come around to the Construction site to pick them up."

It was entirely too soon for someone to have already seen a sign and been to our house and gone. Besides...Hockaday is on the south side of Forest Lane and we didn't go that far putting up signs. This is mysterious indeed, but we quickly got in our car and headed to Hockaday.

We drive around the school and back to the Construction site where a new building is going up. There are 3 or 4 men and two dogs - Billy Bob and Precia - huddled around a small open fire - the dogs lying on blankets. It was a chilly Spring morning and the men had built a fire. When we identified ourselves they said the dogs were comfortable (no kidding!) and enjoying the fire.

They proceeded to tell us that they saw these two dogs trotting south down Welch Road and the dogs came to them when the men stopped to check them out. Their tags had a Plano address, and the men said they didn't figure that someone from Plano would drive all the way to Dallas and dump dogs as cute as these. (insert smiley face)

The story that follows is as amazing evidence of perserverance as I could ever imagine - short of personal life or death situations!

Now bear in mind, this is 1979. No cell phones. No internet. No mobile devices. Not even answering machines for your home phone.

The dog tags had our Plano home phone number so the Construction guys used their office phone to call that number. They got the message, "This number has been disconnected."

The other piece of data they had on the dog tags was the Plano Vet phone number where the dogs got their vaccinations. They called and the Vet's office said, "No, we don't know where they moved to. But we think they both work for ARCO downtown."

The men, not to be denied, call the main switchboard at ARCO and ask for Larry Jefferson. They are connected to my ringing phone in my empty office. (Remember...there are no answering machines.) Fortunately my Secretary wasn't down the hall gossiping about "Who shot J.R?" or whatever and answered my phone. "No, I don't know where he moved. But seems like they were using Ebby Halliday Realtor."

Moving steadily along, the men call Ebby Halliday's office. "Yes. (Hoorah!) Larry and Cindy Jefferson are our clients and they just closed on a house at 4521 Myerwood Lane."

Mystery solved!!! These men found our house, posted a note and took great care of our doggies until we came to pick them up.

It was a helluva beginning to moving into a house that continues to provide sunshine into our lives. May the same hold true for Laura and James.