“Teddy is gone!” I shouted at my mom. “I just couldn’t find him anywhere in the house,” I added. I searched from the basement all the way to the second floor, but I just couldn’t find him. It was the most stressful day of 2019; my parents and I did not enjoy it at all. Since Teddy is already a grown-up dog, we didn’t have to worry too much about him fleeing away from the house. But this time, the “Lost Dog” poster we often see along the street has unfortunately befallen my family. “He has to be somewhere in this community; he can’t go any further, right?” I tried to confirm with my parents to convince myself.
The night before the incident, we had a party at my house with my relatives. Since Teddy is quite shy with “unfamiliar faces,” I often don’t free him away from the cage on such occasions; however, a voice hit straight to my heart, “I want to play with Teddy, pretty please!” my little sister cooed, blinking her eyes as she was begging me. “How could I even reject that plain request? She is just way too cute,” I thought as I struggled within my mind. I gave it a serious thought and decided to open the cage and let Teddy out to play around with my little sister afterwards. As usual, the party continued. The adults were having conversations, the kids were entertaining with Teddy, and the teenagers were watching television. I got pretty sleepy after dinner, so I went up to take a rest in my bedroom. Whoever knew the nap I took that night was the beginning of my “nightmare”?
It was already the morning of the following day. I got up and sighed with a tinge of emotion. I wasn’t ready for or even conscious of the terrible situation we would find ourselves in until I walked down to see Teddy in his cage. I noticed that the balcony was open wide; I thought something was odd. My optical line of sight moved in the direction of the dog cage right next to the balcony, and I felt a little breeze blew across my face as I saw nothing but an empty cage. I started to get flustered and tried to recall what happened the day before, and I realized that I didn’t even lock Teddy back in the cage before I went to bed. I tried to wake my parents up as soon as possible, but they wouldn’t wake up until noon due to the alcohol they had drunk the night before.
I spent the entire morning in despair, even to the extent of blaming myself and my parents. The text “Black bears injured foreigners at Rocky Point Park in Port Moody” on the breaking news depressed me even further. “Did Teddy get eaten by a bear?” and “Did Teddy get run over by a vehicle?” all sorts of presumptions were popping up in my head. The seemingly endless anxiety I was going through was only brought to a stop when I was informed that Teddy had been found at a nearby park after two days of search. At that moment, not only did I feel relief and joy, but I also reflected back on the flaws I had made and tried to think of a reason why Teddy didn’t return for as long as two days.
I knew Teddy was not to blame for the incident because I understood his method of abreacting his emotion is to flee away from the house. I came to a realization that I had been overprotecting him by restricting him in his cage. As human beings, we set an appropriate amount of rules to protect one another, but an excessive amount of rules may result in the restriction or deprivation of ones’ freedom.No one would like over-restrictions, and neither would dogs because, like us, it is the nature of dogs to yearn for freedom.
