AR-News: (TX - US) Man used to think people who were crazy about their pets were....crazy

[Snugglezzz at aol.com]

Dog's best friend
By Elise Mullinix
    
    
David Emola used to think people who were crazy about their pets were, well 
... crazy.

"I thought they were nuts," he said. "How could people be so crazy about a 
dog?"

When he got Sissy in Canton two years ago, he changed his tune.

Then, on March 6, when his beloved blue heeler disappeared from the back of 
his pickup, he felt like he'd lost his best friend.

"The weird thing is, she's almost always rides inside the truck with me," he 
said. "But I had been out of town for a few days, tending to my dad, and I 
felt guilty because she'd been closed up in the house for quite a while. So, that 
day, I let her ride in the back because it was such a pretty day and because 
she'd been cooped up in the house for so long. 
    
After his first stop to the Athens post office, Sissy was still in back of 
the pickup. But when he came out of Southside Feed Store on Highway 19 South, 
she was gone.

"I was completely floored, because I've got her trained," he said. "Sissy 
doesn't make a move without me. All I can figure is she saw something and decided 
to chase it, then just ran off from there."

Frantic to get the dog back, Emola and his wife, Debbie, plastered neon-green 
posters all over town, offering a description of Sissy and a $500 cash reward.

"People were so nice to let me put posters up at their businesses," he said. 
"A lot of them know Sissy, because I always take her with me everywhere, even 
inside the bank. Some ladies at the bank were even taking up money to buy a 
half-page ad in the Athens Review, just to try and help us find her. Everybody 
was just so nice and helpful."

When a couple of days went by with no phone calls, the Emolas began dealing 
with the possibility that Sissy was gone forever.     
    
"I had already decided that if I ever got another dog, it wouldn't be a blue 
heeler because I couldn't bear the thought of replacing her," he said.

>From the beginning, David and Sissy had been inseparable.

"I got her at the First Monday Trade Days," he said. "She was just a puppy, 
and she was the first dog I ever really had that I really spent any time with."

Sissy was David's trusty right hand on his 7-acre farm, sometimes riding 
horseback with him in a specially made saddle that can attach to his own.

"When I hugged Debbie, Sissy would try to push her way between us," he said. 
"She's the jealous type."

But the course of true love -- even the love between a pet and its human -- 
never runs smooth.

"Oh, she was a handful," he said. "Blue heelers are well known to be very 
hard-headed dogs."

First, he had to get her to stop chasing the cows on his land.

"I don't know how long I spent training her and working with her," he said, 
"but I have never hit her or laid a hand on her. I could never do that."

Emola subscribes to the reward method of dog-training. Sissy knows a doggy 
biscuit will appear from Emola's pants pocket if she obeys his commands to "roll 
over," "sit," "speak" or "play dead."   
    
"That's why it made absolutely no sense to me that she would ever leave the 
back of my truck that day," he said.

On Monday night, after two days of waiting and hoping, the Emolas' phone rang.

It was Helen Carhart.

She said, "My son, Brad, had just come in from the store, and he said he'd 
seen a blue heeler outside with another neighborhood dog.

"There's a roping arena behind our house, so I told him it was probably one 
of their dogs."

Then Brad remembered a bright green poster he'd seen in a convenience store.

"He said, 'Mom, do you think that could be the blue heeler that's on the 
poster?'"

Brad, 16, couldn't remember the Emolas' phone number, so his mom called the 
convenience store to get the employee to read it to her over the phone.

"The people at the store said the poster wasn't there anymore, but they said 
they'd seen one at Hollywood Video, so maybe I could get it from them."

Helen called the video store and got the phone number, then she called David 
Emola.

By this time, Brad had found that the dog was, in fact, a female, then closed 
the gate on the back yard, so she couldn't get away.

Emola said, "She hardly got the words out of her mouth, and I ran out the 
door like a shot. When I got to their house, I almost ran past them, trying to 
get out there to see if it was Sissy."

Sure enough, it was.

"She saw me, and she just started jumping up and down and flipping around in 
a circle. Her whole body was wagging," he said.

Emola tried to give Brad Carhart the $500 reward, but the teen-ager refused 
it.

"He didn't want to take it," Helen said. "He'd just turned 16 and gotten a 
new truck, so David offered to buy him new tires or something for his truck; but 
Brad didn't need anything."

Emola said, "I had to give him something, so I made him take $200."

Sissy showed no signs of serious injury.

"We took her to Dr. Jesse Richardson's vet office and had her checked out," 
he said. "All she had was one scratch over her eye and one broken toenail, but 
overall, she was fine.

"That's pretty miraculous, when you think she had to cross Highway 19 to get 
from the feed store to where the Carharts live."

Upon arriving back home, Emola said Sissy promptly went to her bowl, got a 
drink of water, then went to the couch and slept almost two days straight.

"I guess we'll never know what really happened," he said, "but I sure am glad 
it worked out the way it did. That two days she was gone, I kept thinking, 
'Man, whoever gets her will never treat her as well as we've treated her. She 
hardly even knows she's a dog.'"

Now that she's back, will he let her ride in the back of the pickup anymore?

"Maybe when we're out on the land, but definitely not in town," he said. 
"We're not taking any chances like that anymore.

    

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