The Searchers

Sketch for poster:

LOST DOG

Answers to the name Newton, or Tron Tron, or Tronathan. Or Bobon.

Actually, we mostly call him Buddy.

Last seen in Old Town, fleeing in terror.

Even though it is technically against the law, Newton likes to be off the leash. He is very fast (I call him rocket dog) and he gets restless and obnoxious if he isn’t given a chance to sprint around for a bit.

His favorite game is an oldie—fetch—but he seems to love it more than any dog I’ve ever seen. For example, after each fetch he gallantly trots to my left, past me, and takes a wide turn, a victory lap of sorts, before stopping at my feet. I get the sense that he is extremely proud, every time, that although I threw the ball very far, he was able, all by himself, to track it down and return it quite easily. He is eager to prove this to me again, to show me how futile it is to throw the ball since he will only bring it right back, ad nauseum. In this matter, I am powerless against him. In. My. Face.

The best time for a game of fetch is early in the morning. It is usually quiet at the park, even on weekends, before 8 or 9, so we don’t have to worry about the old people who use the stupid workout machines they installed last year and which the dogs like to piss on. Sometimes we can play for 15 or 20 minutes without seeing another living thing. Life truly is grand.

This Saturday, even though I am hungover, I get up early, grab a tennis ball (Newton’s preferred object of pursuit) and head over to the park. It is a beautiful morning, crisp and yellow, our first sunny morning in a few days. I withdraw the ball from my pocket, cock my arm, and fire a long, arcing toss.

Newton gets an excellent jump on the ball. He is a born outfielder. I’ve studied his technique and it’s solid. He begins by watching the ball out of my hand to determine the approximate direction. He is careful about this, never breaking too soon. You can get a lot of dogs to chase nothing with a good pump fake, but not Newton. Hang onto the ball and he’ll just stare at you like you’re stupid, like you forgot the most important part.

Once you let go of the ball, he turns and breaks for the other end of the park, all the while keeping his eyes up for the ball to enter his field of vision. Once he locates it, he adjusts his route and overtakes it, usually by the second bounce. I’ve tried to exceed his range, but even my strongest throws cannot elude him for more than three hops. It is as though he can accelerate to meet the demands of the throw, running ¾ speed until the target is sighted, and then speeding up to make a clean kill.

At his best he reaches the ball mid-hop so that he can take a graceful forward lunge and snap the ball from the middle of air. You can tell he is pumped when he does this too. He bucks his head about the way athletes sometimes pump their fists.

On this particular day, our game ends suddenly. I let loose a throw and Newton runs it down easily, but as he turns a wide semi-circle back around to face me he suddenly drops the ball. It literally falls right out of his mouth the way people in movies drop their pipes when they’re stunned. His mouth, now empty, hangs agape.

I start to laugh at the comical, cartoonish way he does this (he is a fantastic physical comedian, always) but I notice something is wrong. His piercing yellow eyes are fixed beyond me, over my shoulder and to my left. It is like he can see something falling from the sky.

I’ve never known a dog to spend so much time looking up. Newton constantly keeps his eyes peeled for any danger from above. Ceiling fans, street lamps, nothing escapes his notice. Last year, after the Fourth of July, he was so jumpy he actually barked at the moon.

In this case, he is right; something is there. I turn around to see a hot air balloon appearing behind the rooftop of the museum across the street. It is only about 100 yards away, clearly aiming to land right in the middle of the grassy park where we stand.

Newton starts freaking out. He scrambles back and forth, all the while retreating slightly. He growls, as he too is convinced that the balloon is closing in on us. I call for him, but of course I am closer to the balloon and he is just not going to risk a head-on attack. His route begins to veer wider and further back until he starts to ascend the small hill that marks the edge of the park and the beginning of the street.

I am pursuing him by now, but he makes no indication whatsoever that he can hear me calling. He won’t take his eyes off the thing. I’m getting scared. He looks like he is going to back right into the road. He’ll never know what hit him.

I take off running. It is clear he is not going to come to me—he is too frightened—but I don’t want to make him feel that he is being trapped or forced to face the terrible sky demon, so I take a slightly curved path to get to him, all the while reassuring him and asking him to come to me.

Suddenly, the balloon lets out a ghastly roar, the release of flames, which of course make Newton panic. I turn to see the balloon once more. It is very close now, just across the park.

I know from experience that a balloon is nothing to be afraid of, but at this moment it is very easy to see why someone who has never seen one might feel compelled to retreat. To my dog, who is just not very brave to begin with, the balloon must look gigantic. It is probably the biggest thing he’s ever seen, and it is coming right for him. The fact that it roars and breathes fire doesn’t help. It sounds like a fucking lion. And then there’s the deceptively swift way that balloons move, with no discernible effort. They just loom, enormous, all the while getting nearer and nearer, like a monstrous jellyfish.

I can see this is getting dangerous. I don’t know what to do. I feel like screaming Stop! Go back! You’re scaring my dog! But I know this is silly. It’s not that easy to just change directions in a balloon. Besides, I am the one breaking the law.

As Newton reaches and finally steps out into the street, I scream. This seems to snap him out of his trance momentarily because he looks at me, but only for a second. The next moment he is back to watching the rainbow-colored angel of death. Realizing he’s run out of room, he decides to just go for it. With his tail down, he takes off down the street, back the way we came, and turns the corner in a dead run. Gone.

I am in pursuit, for all the good it does me. I used to be fast when I was a young man. I used to outrun everyone on my baseball team. But human speed is nothing to dog speed. Even as I crash along the park sidewalk I can feel how slow I am, how pathetic I must look to the idiots in their flying contraption, chasing a dog that has already disappeared. By the time I reach the corner, he isn’t in view.

I continue around the next corner, hoping he has turned and is retracing the route home, the same walk we’ve done hundreds of times before. I know I am on the right track when I round the second corner to find another man walking toward me with his dog, looking back over his shoulder to where Newton has likely just been. Seeing me hot on his heels, the man must have realized the situation. Again, Newton is nowhere to be seen so I assume he has turned yet again, faithfully reversing our usual course. The park is only a half-mile from our house, but I am already too out of breath to ask the man if he’d seen which way my dog went. It is either keep running or stop and talk, but not both. Luckily the man makes it clear he is not going to help.

“What a nightmare!” he says, admonishing me for not taking better care of my wild cur. Sadly, I am too winded to utter a nice good morning fuck you! so I keep on my dismal pace, chasing a dog I can’t even see.

At the next corner, which is then a straight shot to our house, the trail goes cold. I turn around to see if he has gone the other direction. Nothing. For all I know he is already home, but I can’t see him from here. I start home, praying he will come into view. I am gasping for air by now. My lungs burn from the chilly morning. I bellow his name across the neighborhood, trying not to sound mad or scary.

By the time I reach my house, it is clear he hasn’t come home. He left the park so quickly it seems incomprehensible that he had a plan in mind. Honestly, I don’t think he got beyond Shit! Run!

I am panicked and out of breath as I wake Darby.
“Newton’s gone!”
“What?” she says, the denial of the trauma already kicking in.
“He ran away!”
Darby leaps from bed and dresses quickly. I grab my messenger bag and tell her I am going back out on bicycle. She goes on foot with our other dog, Josie.

I return to the last known place of his whereabouts, several blocks up at the corner where I’d seen the man and his dog. I call to Newton, trying to ride swiftly but not so fast that I won’t see him if he is in someone’s yard. I make circles around the area, trying to take different routes into and out of our street.
It is as I bike a few blocks further from the park, the direction I’d seen him go, when I realize how much distance he could have traveled by now. I have foolishly been navigating our neighborhood, a small section of homes located between 12th and 19th, but there is no reason a dog would conform to this artificial boundary, a concept of real estate. My throat grows full as I realized he might have just as easily kept running straight, right out of our neighborhood and onto Lomas, one of the busiest roads in town. I go forth toward the heavy traffic at the end of the street.

As I cross the wide boulevard I almost can’t look, so fearful am I that I will see my poor pup lying lifeless in the road. Thankfully, there is nothing, no sign of commotion. The bad news is, I still have no idea where Newton has gone. I continue away from our neighborhood, figuring Darby will find him if he stuck close. I need to expand my search.

I can only imagine how far he will run before he stops. Maybe he is still running… Will he run until he gets tired? Will he run for a bit and look over his shoulder to see if he is safe? Will he stop if he realizes he is lost? Will he feel ashamed that he defied me? Is he scared?

I suppose none of it matters, but it only complicates my frustration as I search, knowing I have no idea what, if any, plan Newton hatched while in evasive action.

I am such an asshole. I shouldn’t have let him off the leash. I know it makes him very happy, but he’s just too unpredictable.

Still coming up empty, I head for the bike path along the river. Newton and I regularly walk or jog there, and the river is one of his favorite places. I hope he might have realized his proximity to it while fleeing. Perhaps he caught of whiff of the old Rio Grande. Dogs have great noses, right? They can smell a river a mile away. Then again, if they have such hot noses, why do they have to jam it down into things to get the scent? No matter. I enter the path and keep scanning the patchy cottonwood forest for my dog.

When something is lost, I have noticed a sudden perceptual shift in scale. Whereas, before, my thoughts did not extend beyond what I could see, when something is missing the world becomes a large and complex place. I can picture it unfolding all around me. I imagine the areas I know are there that I can’t yet get to. I can picture the yards, and the garages and all the places I've seen but never been to. It gives the impression that I am very small, and the thing I am searching for is smaller still, so the odds that that thing and I will ever be reunited again are very unlikely. All at once the world seems big and empty and unbelievably cruel.

Newton is not, as far as I can see, on the bike path or in the surrounding woods. My legs feel like acid as I pedal back toward my house. It’s been 15 minutes since he ran off. We might never see him again. I haven’t eaten breakfast and my head feels light.

My god! I will have to spend the whole weekend looking for my dog. I won’t be able to write my column. I’ll get fired. Fuck. I don’t have a good picture for the LOST posters. I’m a photographer. Why don’t I have any good pictures?

I should offer a reward. How much? We’re so broke. Do people actually look harder if there’s money involved? Maybe, but they’re probably not the kind of people I like to hang around with.


He’s chipped, right? At least he has his collar. But it still has our old phone number on it. Fuck!


Someone will find him. He’s so sweet. Someone will call him and they’ll take him home and they’ll get in touch with us. Or will they? What if they like him and they realize that I am a total fuckup that doesn’t deserve a dog? Why should they give him back? What was he doing running loose in the first place?

I let out a sob.

Cut it out. Hold it together. You can cry later. You need to look for your dog.

He’d been such a drag to train. It was awful. Wit’s end I tell you. I made so many jokes about getting rid of him. People will think I did this on purpose! They’ll say they saw it coming. They’ll tell me not to get another dog because I’m too irresponsible.


He’d finally started to grow up a little. He was becoming such a good boy, so loyal and eager to please. I don’t want to do it all over again. I don’t want a new dog. I want my dog.

I feel compelled to circle back to the house. Maybe Darby found him. It seems unlikely, but I don’t have a better idea. I continue to call for him.

About a block from my house I have a clear view of our front porch. There, hiding by the mailbox, is Newton. He is sitting, waiting to be let inside, a sheepish expression on his face. I call his name and he turns and meets me as I coast up our walk. His head hangs low and he wags his tail in his apologetic manner. He believes he is in trouble. He pants heavily.

I hop from my bike and greet him warmly.

“Hey buddy! You’re a good boy! Good job, buddy! Thank you for coming home! Thank you! Thank god! Never again! I’ll never let go of you again.”

We put Newton’s leash on and get in the car to go look for the rest of the search party.