Anyone who has ever lost a dog knows what I’m talking about. Suddenly, your world just isn’t the same. The warm, familiar “all is right with the world” feeling evaporates into a hollow, misty confusion of loss … where is my dog? Is my dog OK? Why did my dog leave me?

Dogs don’t always leave because they want to. Sometimes, they are taken away from us. Sometimes, they just lose their way. Chammy, the innocent Yellow Lab was probably chasing butterflies as she ran out the long lane of her country home and onto the road. Holly, the Greyhound was just having fun as she romped through the fields … Daizy the Blue Lacy dog from Texas was whisked off in a hurricane.

It doesn’t matter how a dog goes missing. It doesn’t matter if it goes chasing butterflies or chasing Dorothy’s Wicked Witch peddling her bike on the winds of a hurricane. What matters, is how we suddenly realize how much we really love that dog.

How people find their lost dogs is fascinating. The whole process is a study in achieving a goal – any goal, actually. It starts with defining current reality (My dog is gone!), sets an objective (I want my dog back!) and determines a plan of action to make things happen. This is the basic formula for all achievement.

One could splatter posters on a thousand street corners and blast announcements from the loudest boom boxes … one could scream from the highest mountain or whisper through the sea … but the longing – the longing for our love to come home – is the magnet that draws the heart near.

Daizy the dog from Texas isn’t likely to be entered in any of our shows. She isn’t likely to be written up in books of breed standards or champions of the past. She’s a dog that got lost in a Texas hurricane and never gave up. That tenacity (never give up) is, in itself, a great lesson for us all. But, for Daizy and the family that never gave up on her, it’s a testament to the power of faith in spite of the odds.

Assuredly, there were people along the way, during the ten months of suspense in which Daizy was lost, who didn’t believe she would ever be found. What if you were their dog? What if you belonged to someone who gave up, and forgot about you – who closed their heart and mind to you when you were still trying to find your way back?

All of us have lost a dog, a friend or a loved one. All of us have wondered if they would ever come back. Some of us have given up … and others have searched until their missing dogs were found.

Some … a lucky few … open the door one day to find a familiar, happy face looking up at ours … and a tail wagging just for us. Many thanks to the family of Daizy the Blue Lacy dog in Texas, for showing us the power of love and hope in a world of shifting sands and roaring hurricanes, where missing from home doesn’t always mean “missing from the heart.”