Your beloved pooch, feline or songbird escapes and despite exhaustive attempts to locate them or spread the word online, there is no sign of them.
Our young family lived through this unwanted experience when our excitable Ernie — a five-year-old husky x retriever who looks like a chocolate Labrador — took off from the temporary accommodation we had stationed him in while we attempt to sell our house.
Keen readers — or viewers — might remember Ernie from his Foxy and JR Footy Show appearance when Grace and I first welcomed him into our family, but he’s certainly grown a lot since then.
Grace and I have both said farewell to family pets before, but for Eden, 4, and Bonnie, 1, the concept of Ernie not being in the backyard was certainly a foreign one.
Having escaped from near Victory Park on Thursday afternoon, Ernie seems to have gone on a spectacular misadventure — with the scars to prove it — until being picked up sometime late Friday behind one of the various businesses opposite Shepparton Marketplace on Benalla Rd.
Maybe he was shopping for a new ride at one of the car yards? Or looking for a lift home?
Either way, his trip landed him at the vets over the weekend and eventually at the Shepparton Animal Shelter on Monday.
But of course, we weren’t to know any of this until the call came through on Monday that he had been dropped off at the shelter.
While we were able to distract Eden on Thursday evening, we had to confront Ernie’s disappearance — and the possibility that he might not come back — with her on Friday.
An emotional weekend — with plenty of hours spent driving the streets — ensued, as Eden pondered why he might have run away and Bonnie banged her fists on the back door and wondered why he didn’t come running.
It is a hard lesson to learn that your pets will not be with you forever.
But, for now at least, it is one lesson my children can put on hold.
Tyler Maher is the editor of the News.
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