Last night we all came together on Lookover Lane to search for our next-door neighbor’s Yorkie, who’d broken her lead. We didn’t think she’d gone far as she’s deaf, mostly blind, and severely arthritic, so we stayed close to our homes, looking in crannies and under tarps, hoping she’d found a warm and safe spot. We also thought that if she was wandering, she’d go downhill. A group of neighbors took their flashlights to the brook at the bottom of our dead-end street.

We live in a heavily wooded area. A brown-and-tan bundle of fur the size of a football is a needle in a haystack…especially in the dark. Temps were dropping fast. In the distance a fox sang a love song; beady eyes caught our flashlights as we stomped over branches and through decaying leaves. After two hours we decided to give up for the night. In the morning we would start again.

About an hour later the neighbor on the other side of us texted: “Dog found alive at the M house.” The Ms live at the top of a steep, grassy 1/4-mile incline above us. Their daughter, the first one home, had discovered her under the front-porch light they always leave on. So even though our houses were all aglow on Lookover Lane, this small and struggling little one, lost in the dark, followed a single light in the night.

Merry Christmas 2022