I loved school.  Seriously.  I am probably one of the .01% of people who has never hated school.  There wasn’t a time (READ: Middle School) that I didn’t enjoy the classes I was in, the teachers I had, and the kids I hung around.   Yes, there were some bad teachers, classes, and kids thrown in there, but not to the extent that they ruined my school experience.  I think one of the reasons I was fortunate in this realm is because I was placed early-on with a group of kids just like me: NERDS.

You see, in our town, they didn’t pull out gifted students for a period each week, or a time each day.  They separated them into their own classroom, with their own teachers.  We were free to be ourselves – geeky and awkward and, ultimately, nerdy.  A characteristic that can normally be used against you, we were all bonded together by our interest in learning.  It was ok to be excited about the science experiment or completely engrossed in the novel we were studying.  Sure, there was a social hierarchy within the gifted kids – even smart kids can be cool – but it felt like a much narrower spectrum.  Whatever we might find to tease or bully each other about, and there was plenty, there was a sense of comraderie within the program.  And because they kept us together we had the same people in our classes, year after year.  The further along I went in school the smaller my class of nerds became, and the tighter our bond.

One thing I noticed about being in a separate program is that the classroom itself felt different.  The classes I had outside of gifted were often choatic and unorganized.  Granted, these were all non-core classes (art, photography, geography, gym), but the ability of the teacher to control the classroom seemed to weaken when dealing with a group of randomly placed students.  There are too many competing needs, too many varied interests. And this wasn’t specific to us being gifted at all.  When you have a group that all share the same desire and goal, I think it’s easier to teach to them.  My core classes were quieter, more focused.  You had students that acted out, but it wasn’t the norm and the teachers were able to contain them.  The point being, I really enjoyed school because the students and teachers allowed us to have amazing classes.

One class I loved, one teacher I loved, was in 6th grade.  We didn’t have different teachers for every single class back then; I had a homeroom teacher that I spent a majority of my day with.  I think a lot of of favorite teachers occur early in school because these are the people we spent the entire day with, our surrogate moms.

And mine was fantastic.  She created a warm and inviting atmosphere for learning and living.  I loved being in her classroom each and every day.  Because, to be honest, it was better than being at home.  When you have a less than ideal home life – parents fighing, not much interaction within the family – you look for a connection elsewhere.  And I found that in Mrs. Staudt’s class.  I remember liking her instantly, and forming a close bond with her over the school year.

It was the first year of middle school, being at the bottom of the student totem pole.  A critical period in a student’s life.  That was the year I read Watership Down  and created a replica of the train from Murder on the Orient Express. That was the year we went on a field trip to “Medieval Times” and a classmate passed out next to the blacksmith 🙂

We wrote in journals everyday.  I kept all of mine.  It was a great way to release some of the tensions from home and get feedback through a safe venue.  Now, middle school is an awkward time for most of us, me included, so having a great teacher during this period is pretty damn important.  I’m so grateful for what she gave me.

The last time I saw Mrs. Staudt was the last day of 8th grade.  I went around one last time to visit some of my favorite teachers, and I remembered thinking about how much I was goin to miss her.  I haven’t seen or talked to her since.

So you can imagine my excitement today when a friend posted a drawing he made for Mrs. Staudt when he was in 6th grade – she kept that drawing for the last 19 years and recently shared this with him after becoming friends on Facebook.

She’s on Facebook!!

Now I know it’s not a big deal nowadays for teachers to be on FB – a lot of teachers friend their students as soon as they leave their class (and some while they are IN their class, which is another post for another time).  However, BACK IN THE DAY we didn’t have such technology. So you could go years without communicating with adults from your past, like a favorite teacher.  They become frozen in time and you contineue to imagine them as they were, teaching away in a little classroom, never aging a bit.

It was completely surreal to see Mrs. Staudt on FB, aged to current day.  No longer tied in my mind to the early 90s (think: floral dresses!) and confined to a classroom.   She’s now retired after 30 years of teaching, and her first grandson was born a few months ago.

She had a life outside of school!  Mind blown!  Well, mind blown when we were younger; in our mind, teachers live at school and are not allowed into the general population.  Seeing them in public was always strange.  Always awkward.  I can’t imagine being friends with them back then – seeing post of their families, their vacations, videos of penguins they reccommend we watch.  It was a different time, pre-social media.  I’m not saying it was better or worse – it was both – just different.

I am glad that the technology now exists as I have really enjoyed being back in touch with several of my former teachers.  It’s been fun catching up with them and finding out what they’ve been doing in their lives, outside of school.   It also gives me the opportunity to let them know how they influenced and changed my life, in such positive ways.  Were in not for the encouragement and support of exceptional teachers, I’d be a different person today.  Both mentally and emotionally.  I guess that’s why I’ve always been drawn to the education field in my career choices; they gave me something that is invaluable and I hope to one day pay it forward the young people I work with.  Nerds and jocks alike 😉

One final thing on Nerds.  My Dad and I use that term for certain contestants on Jeopardy!, but in the opposite of how I’ve been using it in this post.  It’s really his term, he uses “nerd” when describing really annoying smart people – you know who I’m talking about, Jeopardy! watchers.  They just possess this quality of being annoyingly nerdy.   It’s the way the talk, the things they say, the manner in which they give their answers on the show.  They just ooze nerdiness.  And when my Dad and I see them on the show, we jump to tag them first.  NERD!  The fastest and easiest way to spot the nerds is during the “get to know you” segement during the show.  This is when contestants feel free to wave their freak/geek flags.  And that’s where you see the spectrum of Nerd come out.  There are the cool nerds – the rocket scientist – and there the weird nerds- the biologist whose specializes in algae – and the boring nerds – the CPA.  Sorry CPAs 🙂  And then there are the NERDS Dad is talking about.  They can be any profession, any age, any race.  They just gotta be aggravatingly nerdy.  It’s sorta like our version of a drinking game.

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One of my favorite nerds is Toofer from 30 Rock. His nerdom was revealed to us in the very first episode.

Toufer: [Complaining to Liz] Surely our massive conglomerate parent company could spring for a samovar of coffee.
Frank: Yeah, or, like, a big coffee dispenser!
Toufer: [Condescendingly] That’s what a samovar is.
Frank: Are there other black nerds, or is it just you and Urkel?

NOT WITHOUT MY CORGI: THE TOBY JONES STORY

PART III

So where was I?

It has just been discovered that Toby was placed on Petfinder.com by Karin (after being given a new name and backstory) and adopted by a family in Maine.  This happened on a Saturday night, the day before I was set to move out of Susan’s house.  The next morning I moved out – without running into Susan, who didn’t know that I found out about Toby – and my detective contacted the family in Maine.

The family in Maine was stunned when my detective told them the truth of Colby Cheddar’s past; in fact, they didn’t believe him.  They were under the impression that Toby was a neglected dog.  That his owner had cancer and he was placed into foster care with Susan.  They thought they “rescued” him.  So, when a detective called saying it’s all a ruse and Colby is in fact TOBY, and stolen, they called BS on my detective.

This was a minor set-back.

My detective contacted the local police in Maine and gave them all the evidence proving that Toby belongs to me.  The family in Maine also contacted the police, informing them that a “detective” is after their rescued dog.  The police share the evidence with the Maine family and they begin to believe.

In the meantime, it’s Monday and I’m back at work, on a high after discovering that Toby is 1) alive and 2) chilling in Maine.  I enter triumphant into the office, greeting my co-workers with:

Guess who’s dog isn’t dead!?  Guess who found out that those crazy bitches stole him!?  I told you I wasn’t crazy!  WHO’S CRAZY NOW, PEOPLE??  WHO’S. CRAZY. NOW!?

Hey, I think I deserved to gloat a little bit.

My co-workers were shocked, to say the least.  I mean, you can attest to this after reading so far – who would have ever thought a pair of old white women would steal someone’s dog?

Not our lunch lady, that’s for sure.  As she explained,

Shit, only crazy white people would steal someone’s dog.

She’s black and apparently this is not something that happens in the african american community.  No one would dare to steal someone’s dog because they think it’s being neglected.  Apparently they have bigger problems to deal with than a middle-class girl and her purebred corgi.  I mean, really? #whitegirlproblems

About that time, I started getting phone calls from Karin.  Turns out that the Maine family contacted her, in panic and confusion, after hearing from my detective.  From what I learned later, she told the Maine family not to worry.  That the whole thing was going to be worked out and they would get to keep Colby Cheddar.  In fact, she told them that they didn’t have to give him up because this was just like the Hurricane Katrina situation.

Come again, crazy putty?

Yes.   Just like how abandoned dogs were adopted after the destruction from Hurricane Katrina, that’s how they came to have Toby.  Because I am now a natural disaster (hmm, there are some that might agree with this comparison).  I guess Karin thought that ruling would translate in this situation?   I had “abandoned” my dog in Susan’s care (HE WAS STOLEN) and the Maine family now had claim to him?   Yup, that’s what she told them.

So Karin kept calling me at work and I ignored her calls.  Well, mostly.  I answered a couple of times.  She took the position that she had no idea that I didn’t willingly give up Toby for adoption.  Yeah, you read that correctly.  That bitch tried to convince me that Susan came to her and said that I was moving to DC and couldn’t take Toby with me.  Sure, that makes sense.  That completely exlains why she 1) changed his name 2) said I died from cancer and neglected him 3) took him to a new vet for shots and tried to change his microchip information and 4) DIDN’T INVOLVE ME AT ALL.

I tried to say as little as possible to her because I was certain we’d be going to court and I didn’t want anything held against me in a court of law (I watched a lot of “Law and Order” back in the day).  So when she started spouting these lies to me, to try and cover her ass, I calmly told her that her story didn’t add up.  Even if I were to accept the idea that she gave Toby a new name and backstory “so he could make a fresh start,” why in the hell didn’t she tell me what was going on when I called him the night he went missing??

Oh, well by then it just too late!  Toby had already left for Maine and I just didn’t know what to do.  Everything had been done!

Yeah…so instead of telling me that you just LIED AND SAID YOU HAD NO IDEA WHERE HE WAS?!

Sorry, this is the point of the story where I start getting really angry.  Isn’t anger one of the stages of grief?  Since I was no longer grieving over his loss, I was free to focus on the anger stage.  Permanently.

SIDENOTE:  I had forgotten to mention this in Part I or II, but Karin has done this before.  Stolen someone’s dog from right out of their yard.  When I was looking for Toby I ran into the director of one of the rescue leagues in DC.  He knew Karin personally.  And he told me that she had brought dogs, more than me, into their facility that she claimed she “found.”  That they were abandoned animals.  Turns out that the scanned these dogs microchips and they weren’t lost dogs at all; they all had owners who were looking for them.  And she kept that defense, that she had “found them.”

I ran into Susan that night when I went back to the house to pick up the last of my stuff.  I wasn’t sure if she knew by now, so I took David with me as my witness in case I saw her.  It wasn’t until I was about to leave that she called me, asking where I was.  When I told her I was at the house she said “me too!” and came into my room.  She said that she knew that I had found out about Toby.  I quickly found my boyfriend outside and asked him to come in.  I didn’t say ONE WORD to Susan the entire time.  She told me that I needed to “think long and hard” about what I was going to do.  That Toby was “in a good place, a real good place” and I should leave him there.  That he was “badly neglected in my care” and was better off with the family in Maine and   I was fuming inside,  fuming, but I said nothing.  It was David who spoke up with, “are you serious?  You stole her fucking dog!”  God bless him.  I’m lucky (she’s lucky) I didn’t bitch slap her, I was so close.  Instead, I took that last box and calmy left the house.

Susan started contacting me as well.  However, when I wouldn’t take her calls she resorted to faxing me.  You need to read that one, it’s a doozy.  She basically tells me that while I am a “sweetheart,” I am also a harlot who spends her nights on the town with various men and am a “terrible pet owner.”  The best line?

Please don’t cry when you read this.

No worries there, Susan.  In this fax she reveals some of the dellusional thinking that led her to kidnap Toby.  She accused me of not feeding Toby or the rabbits and abandoning them for days at a time.  She speaks of Toby as a dog who is “haunted by human touch.”

HAUNTED BY HUMAN TOUCH, PEOPLE.

Have you guys met this dog?  Has SHE met this dog?  He had a goofy smile planted permanently on his face.  He is happier than any human I know.  Sure, he would snap at her dogs from time to time, when there was food involved.  I’m not saying Toby isn’t an asshole, I’m just saying he’s not void of human attention.

And the accusation that I abanoned them for days and didn’t feed them?  Complely and utterly false.  First of all,  I think I was out of town twice during the year I lived there – once for Christmas vacation and once in February.  The first Susan offered to take care of Toby and it was all planned out in advance.  The second, my friend was staying with me at that time and watched Toby.  Hell, you can check my work attendance records, I was there.  Every day.  You don’t just “skip” days while working at a charter school.  Please.  And the idea that I didn’t feed and water them??  Is she crazy?  Actually, she is.  Susan did give them food and water, don’t get me wrong.  She was there all day long (because she couldn’t get a job) and did take care of them.  Hell, I used to have to tell Susan not to give Toby human food because he was overweight.  WHO’S NEGLECTING THE DOG NOW?

Karin began to email me, along with Susan, after a couple of days.  Click on the link to the back and forth where I explain to Karin that her story doesn’t add up.  That she stole my dog, pure and simple, and covered the whole thing up.  Susan chimes in with some awesome crazy talk, that email is worth reading the whole thing.

So back to the people in Maine.  They contact me, after I send them approximately 500 pictures of Toby (one for each day of his life, I believe).  The wife calls me and tells me that they believe me.  That they know I didn’t neglect Toby and that they are going to give him back.   And she’s a wreck.   She is so so upset.  And I can understand why.   She had been looking for a corgi to adopt for several years – she drove all the way to Maryland because she wanted him so much.  In fact, she actually asked me at some point in the conversation if I would be willing to let them keep him.  It broke my heart, she was crying and just so upset.  So I just gently explained that I coudn’t, that I loved him so much I had hired a detective to find him.

CRAZY SIDE NOTE:  I found out, after speaking to the husband, that we had more in common than a corgi.  Turns out the husband went to my high school in Florida!  At the same time as me!  He’s only two years older than me and moved to my hometown for a couple of years.  He and I actually had a few friends in common.  How crazy is that?  Well, I mean, not as crazy as the rest of this story, but still.  What a small world!

So we arranged for Toby’s departure.  I would fly up to Boston that upcoming weekend and pick him up.  Actually, my ex-fiance was awesome and willing to drive to Maine (several hours from where he lived in Boston) and picked him up from them, so that I would only have to fly to Boston.

Susan and Karin continued to try to and convince me that I should let Toby stay in Maine.  Karin offered me money to let him stay there – thoughtful of her, no?  I’m guessing she was just freaked out that the family in Maine was going to sue her.  In fact, the only point at which I almost went off on her was when she was told me to really think about keeping in Maine, and that I needed to:

Let go and let God.

She told me this over the phone and if it had been possible to punch someone through the phone, I would have done it then.  I mean, let go and let God?!  Was she really using that proverb (I think that’s what that is) to convince me to give up my dog?!  I’m sorry, did GOD tell her to steal him?? Yeah, I don’t F’ING think so.

Another gem came after I accused her of “stealing” him.

That’s your problem, you think of him as your property.

Oh, you’ll have to EXCUSE ME, did I miss the part where Toby was an independent member of society!  Can he vote and pay taxes?!  He IS my property, bitch.

(Sorry, I normally wouldn’t refer to him as such, but the audacity of that woman, I can’t even begin to explain.  To use anything to justify stealing someone’s animal is just sick.)

And here’s the thing.  If Susan and Karin ACTUALLY thought I was neglecting Toby, if they ACTUALLY believed it, then they should have reported me to the authorities.  They should have had me investigated.  But they didn’t, they took matters into their own  hands.  Hmm, what is that similar to?  Oh, I know.  It’s like a Neighborhood Watch person believing they saw something “suspicious” and instead of letting the police handle it, trying to handle things on their own.  And we saw how well THAT turned out.  I know, it’s not the same thing, but you get my point.  They had legal options to persue and they didnt’t.

I went up to Boston that weekend and flew back with Toby.  And we went to our new home in DC.  With a sane roomate, thank god.  A few weeks after I arrived, we had a party.  Partly to welcome me to the house.  Here’s what Toby wore:

My detective advised me to take Karin and Susan to small claims court so that I could re-coop the costs of finding Toby.  At first, I wanted to press criminal charges against them, and for good reason.  However, my detective pointed out that not much would happen to them.  That it would be deemed petty theft (like past charges that Karin had) and they would be slapped with probation.  Also, given the way in which I found out about Toby, he wasn’t sure we should pursue the criminal route.

I would have liked to have sued Karin and Susan for emotional damage in real court, and take every penny they had, but do you know how expensive a lawyer is?  RULL EXPENSIVE.  So, being a person of “limited means,” I resorted to small claims court, where you can only sue for the actual costs you incured.

I sued Karin and Susan; Susan then countersued me.  For what, you ask?  FOR A YEAR’S WORTH OF PETSITTING.   She was claiming I had abandoned Toby in her care.  For the year.  God, I can’t even begin to explain her crazyness.

In the end I settled with Karin (only) out of court.  She paid me for all my expenses.  It was done with, finally.  It took several months of going back and forth to settle between us.  To the very end, she continued to claim she had “no idea” I hadn’t given Toby up on my own.  Still makes me want to vomit.

The last bit of trivia involved with this story came a few months later.  I got a FedEx from daytime TV’s Judge Joe Mathis.  They had seen my small claims court paperwork and wanted Karin and I on the show.  Unfortunately, we have already settled by then (and I doubt Karin would have gone for it).  Otherwise, how awesome would that have been?!  Can you imagine the spectacle?  I would have loved to have brought Toby on there, show everyone the “haunted by human touch” “neglected” dog.   Also, it would have been in the running for most insane story every told on court tv.

And that’s it, that’s the story of how my dog was stolen by a posssible terrorist and her senior citizen animal rights activitist neighbor and adopted to a family in Maine.  Completely true and almost unbelievable.

Stay tuned for the Lifetime movie, you know it’s coming.

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LIZ:  Oh, no no no, she is nuts when it comes to guys.  We had a name for her back in Chicago, it’s to rude to say outloud.

Liz writes something down on a “Variety” magazine.  Jack reads it.

JACK: Crazy putty?

NOT WITHOUT MY CORGI: THE TOBY JONES STORY

PART DEUX

Toby went missing on a Thursday (September 13).

The very next day, I had suspicions that Susan and Karin were behind this.  Call it a hunch — or call it obvious, based on what I’ve already told you.  I tried a “sneak attack” that night and stopped by Karin’s house unannounced.  I brought my friend, Leif, as back-up in case we needed to take her down…or, in case we caught her and I needed a witness.  There were a lot of dogs at her house, but no Toby.  I told her I was coming by with some flyers for her to post – which she happily took.  She gave me some tips on where to search (checking with humane societies, for example) but didn’t seem that distraught or concerned.  She also didn’t offer to help herself.

And neither did Susan.  Over the next week, I posted 100 flyers around town.  You can see a crappy black & white version here.  Imagine it in color and 11 x 17 – beautiful really 🙂  I put a notice in The Washington Post, I posted several places online, and I checked-in daily with the humane societies in the three closest counties.  I visited them and checked out their DOA (Dead on Arrival) list; which is just awful thing to have to do.  But several people thought Toby had been struck and killed by a car – not that they really told me to my face, but I knew what everyone was thinking.  And it was possible.  However, unless the person took his body and disposed of it themselves, it would have been picked up with the county and recorded by the humane society.  Thankfully, it wasn’t.

Can I interject here with how heartbroken I was?  I was simply destroyed by his disappearance.  I was not a crier at that time, but I would break down all the time, thinking about it.  Toby was my child, essentially, and he was all I had in DC.  I didn’t have a husband or children, I was far away from my family.  He was it for me.  So for him to go missing and for me to have no idea what happened to him, it tortured me.  And what’s the most dangerous thing on earth?  An angry mother.  See, you just don’t mess with someone’s child.  It’s the one thing they will kill for.  So it’s understandable that I went slightly crazy in the weeks following  his dissapearnce.

Which it turns out was a good thing.  See, just like Sally Field in the hit TV movie, “Not Without My Daughter,” you don’t give up on your kids.  If there is a chance they are out there, you’re going to find them.  You are going to move heaven and earth to get to them.

I started searching for clues around the house.  Looked through the living room, around the computer – checking out all the notepads that Susan writes on.  I looked for numbers, names, that stood out.  I was trying to locate other foster homes that Karin used for her “rescued” dogs.  Perhaps they took him to one of those?  I even looked up Susan and Karin on Maryland’s ciminal database.  It’s public.  Both had been charged with petty thefts (under $500).  Hmm, stealing something?  Sounds familiar to me.  Susan only had the one charge.  Karin had that plus: rogue and vagabond and disorderly conduct.   These charges were brought up by the arresting officer.  The found her not guilty of disorderly conduct, but the other two stuck and she was given probation.

After one week I was getting nowhere; I even offered up a $500 award, but only got a couple of useless phone calls (pranksters).  I just knew he hadn’t vanished into thin air, someone had to be hiding him.  I just needed to find them.   

So I decided to hire a pet detective.   Oh yes, they exist.  I looked up several and spoke to a few.  They are hella expensive though, thousands of dollars and that’s just to get them to travel to your home.  Mama might be sad, but she didn’t have that kind of money.  Instead, I ended up going with a local retired cop.  I created a timeline for him, recording what I knew so far.  Yeah, I was serious.  My co-workers thought I was losing my mind, I’m sure.  I know they did.  But they could see that I needed this hope to cling to.  So if I needed to believe that my landlord and her old neighbor stole my dog, so be it.  Little did they know…

The detective saw some plausibility to my story – or he saw that I would pay the retainer.  Either way, he agreed to take on the case.  We have hope!  The next two weeks went by and no evidence turned up.  The detective had all sorts of plans to investigate them, but he wasn’t turning anything up.  I was getting frustrated.  One Sunday afternoon, I was on the porch, making more reward signs.  Susan was reading the paper next to me.  Leisurely.  I casually brought up Toby, asking her what she thought about a reward.  She was all for it, she thought it was a good way to get leads.  I kept repeating to her that I just needed to know if he was ok, I just needed to know he was safe.  I was trying to coax anything out of her, get her to confess something.  Fat chance.  Here’s what she had to offer up instead.

 Susan:  You know, there have been a lot of construction workers across the street, working on a neighbor’s house.  And a lot of them are Mexicans.  Now, I don’t want to come off as racist (HERE COMES SOMETHING INCREDIBLE RACIST), but you know that they don’t have any respect for people’s things.

DID THAT JUST HAPPEN?!

Yes, yes it did.  Susan just said that Mexicans have no respect for people’s things.  I mean, jesus, I could not make this stuff up.

Susan:  So if you get a call from someone, don’t ask any questions.  Just give them the money.

And I’m just sitting there, staring at her in disbelief.  Where does this woman get off??  And that’s when I decided to ask her what I had been thinking for awhile.  Why wasn’t she trying to help me find Toby?  Why didn’t she seem concerned that he was gone?

And she just went off.  Went off about  her upcoming trial, how she was so busy traveling back and forth to NYC to prepare for it, how she was worried about the house (they were trying to foreclose on it because she had no money for the mortgage).  So I just gave up on her, I didn’t think I was going to get her to break.  Especially after she offered up all the Mexicans in her place.

Did I mention that my detective’s name was Richard.  Which means, wait for it, that my Private Eye was a Dick!  Sorry, I had to say it.

So we’ve made it to the night of September 30.  The night before I move out of Susan’s house.  Yes, I was still moving.  While looking for my dog, I was also packing to move into DC.  There’s nothing stressful about this situation.  That last night I was at my boyfriend’s apartment; we had just got done watching the Gators lose to Auburn.  I was not in a good mood.

And then it happened.  Now, I can’t really say what IT is.  See, I’ve consulted with a few of my lawyer friends about how this all went down, how we discovered where Toby was.  And it’s a little…sticky.  And that’s why I didn’t want to tell this story online- I’m not able to tell the whole thing, plus it’s just a much better story to hear in person.  If you really need to know the whole story, just invite me out for a drink.

So…where was I?  The stickiness.  See, something happened that night, less than 8 hours before I was set to move.  And that something was this:  we discovered where Toby was.

He was in Maine.

Here’s what happened:

Mid-August:  I reveal to Susan that I am moving to DC and taking Toby with me.

End of August/Beginning of September:  Karin posts a listing on her PetFinder.com page.  She advertises that Toby is up for adoption.  But she changes his name to COLBY CHEDDAR and creates a new history for him!  He is now a neglected and abandoned dog.  His owner – that’s me! – got cancer shortly after she got him and died.  Oh yeah, I’m dead!  Did you know??  I’m sorry to tell you this way.  Believe me, I was shocked myself.

Anyways, people respond to this ad that Karin posted.   One of the responses is from a family from Maine – husband, wife, and son.  They live in the country, have plenty of land for dogs to roam, and they would love a corgi.  They arrange with Karin and Susan to adopt Toby- err, I mean COLBY CHEDDAR.  The wife drives all the way day from Maine to pick him up.

Now, the family in Maine ended up sending me all the correspondence between themselves and Susan/Karin.  Here’s where Susan writes them, describing how she is fostering Colby.   Yeah, she was kind enough to foster the Cheddster (I just made up that name right now) after my death.  By cancer.

September 13: The day that Toby went missing from the house was the day that the wife from Maine picked Toby/Colby up.  At Karin’s house.   Remember when I called up Karin that night to find out where Toby was??  Yeah, Susan was over there and Toby had already left for Maine.  Just fantastic human beings, these people are.

The Maine wife wrote to Karin when she and Toby/Colby made it back home.  She even sent pictures of T/C at his new home, wearing his Gators collar  – that I bought him (that would later be used to identify him)!  Oh, did you know that Karin was kind enough to offer up suggestions for Colby’s new name?  You know, since Colby wasn’t a new name.  Karin suggested Shiloh, because it means “place of peace.”

I barfed the first time I read that.

But never mind that, friends.  Just NEVER MIND THAT.  I had found my dog!!!  I was not crazy!!!  Well, I mean, I am definitely crazy, but not about this.

DON’T MESS WITH A MOTHER.

September 30/October 1: My Private Dick and I discuss our next move.  We agree that he will contact the family in Maine and arrange for the transfer of Colby  Toby back to DC.

That’s where we hit  our next roadblock.  Because the family in Maine, they weren’t giving him back.  In fact, when my detective called, they refused to believe him.  They said they they rescued Toby Colby from a neglect situation – and then they called their local police.

And THAT’S when the story gets rull interesting.

END OF PART DEUX.

Link to Part III

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Never follow a hippie to a second location. – Jackie D.