Best doggone dog in the west (west alabama)

Sadness. My dog is gone.

I love dogs, grew up with one living in the house, sleeping in my bed wth me. Kristi does not love dogs. It took me years to convince her we needed one. 4 years ago we made a bet on the gender of her sister's first child. I won that bet (shout-out to my nephew Will!) As a result of that wager I won the right to get a dog. I didn't cash in on that bet until a couple years ago. Almost two years ago Mally joined our family. She is (was?) a mix Great Pyrenese/ German Shepherd. She was huge. Could stand on her back feet and look me in the eye. Unfortunately her size mixed with her puppyness, made for some rough play when she was a puppy and so she didn't make friends with Kristi or Ethan very easily.

Since we don't have a fence, she was a chain dog. She would stay on her chain during the day and at night I would let her off to run wild in the neighborhood. After a few months of this I learned that every night she was going across the street and playing with Uncle Danny's dog Smokey. Apparently they were the best of friends. Smokey is a boy. Malley is a girl. But they've both been fixed so nothing inappropriate was going on. Sadly we learned a few months ago that Smokey is going blind and it had been decided he was going to be "put down". Feeling really bad about this, Uncle Danny decided to let him off his chain for a couple last nights of freedom. And of course Smokey came to our house to play for those nights. Mally was so happy having a friend to play with at our house. Then it happened.

Thanksgiving night, I let Mally off the chain so that she and Smokey could run a play together in the field. That was the last time I saw her. She's never been one to run away before, but I wasn't too worried when we didn't see either of them the next day or two. And actually I had given up all hope after a week or so. Then a Christmas miracle, a couple days after Christmas Smokey was found at the end of our road. Yeah! Surely Mally was somewhere close as well. Ethan and I went on a Malley hunt. Taking flyers to all of our neighbors, asking them if they'd see a huge white dog running around. And we were given some hope. A couple of them had seen Smokey and another dog in the weeks prior, but only Smokey recently. But alas, Mally has still not been found. And what's even worse, Smokey has not been eating for weeks. He circles our house looking for Malley. We're all afraid that something happened to Mally and that Smokey is in mourning. I guess I am too.