Safely Home: Friends With Chainsaws

Daisy is a three-year-old Lab Retriever. She strays a little bit but normally she runs back to home base right on time. We couldn’t figure out where she was and for four to six hours we searched the surrounding neighborhoods, a 22-square-mile area around our home. A while back, Daisy made friends with some construction workers. The sound of chainsaws and the really high-pitched screech of the tree-shredding machine carrying over a long distance drew her in, and the men would throw ball and pet her. In the week prior to Daisy going missing, weather came through bringing down a lot of trees. Daisy must have heard the sound of the chainsaws and shredders and gone to look for her friends. This time it was a different group of men who didn’t know her from before and she had no tag. They picked her up thinking she was a stray and called animal control. I got the call from PetLink and picked her up. It worked out well but obviously, if she hadn’t been chipped, she couldn’t have been identified. We were worried but are so happy we got her back. Thank God we have the microchip! We live in the city limits of St Charles but the acreage we have allows Daisy to run around 50 acres and of course she can get sidetracked. She wasn’t the same dog for a week, not so playful and fun. She hasn’t wandered off since and now has an ID collar. Daisy’s Labrador Retriever bloodlines give her a genetic urge to go fetch all day long. It makes for a great hunting dog but because she has no automatic reflex that tells her she is way beyond her limits she’s prone to heat exhaustion from sweating and panting. With her PetLink microchip, if anyone finds her in physical trouble they can contact me fast.