He Still a Little Sad

There I was, thinking back on what I had been through the past few days and realized, not all was bad. I had gotten closer to my family and learned a few valuable lessons along the way. I have grown as a man, even if I had been a complete failure when i had started. It all started on the day of my kids birthday. I had stayed in at work a little later than i realized and ended up arriving late. He had been complaining for weeks that he wanted a dog, so I decided to get him one. I couldn't wait to see the look on his face when he opened it. However, with it being late afternoon in San Francisco, traffic was bustling and I got caught up in it. I didn't have time for this, so i tried to speed my way home, with no avail, and got pulled over for speeding. As if i wasn't already late enough, now i had to add on another fifteen minutes my kid would be waiting for me. By the time i got home, it was already too late. My kid had opened my present and was disappointed in me being late. He didn't even like the present i gave him. There was nothing i could do at this point, nothing i could do to change my relationship with my son.

After his party was over, i had tried to talk to him and change his attitude, but nothing i said could change that same look on his face. He was brokenhearted and dismayed when i had finally given up on talking to him. As i was walking down the hall away from his bedroom, my wife,Diane, stopped me to ask how he was feeling.

"He still a little sad," i said," I don't know what will cheer him up?"

"Try spending more time with him, he really wanted you to be here for his birthday," she said.

I had known it all along but still didn't get here on time. I had let him down, was he going to hate me for this? How bad of a father must i be to make him this mad at me. As i was pondering this idea, i felt a furry object rub my leg. I looked down to see the eyes of a golden retriever staring back up at me. I had found him in a pound two days earlier and was instantly attached. I thought maybe he was the key for bonding with my son. If he was, he was going to have to be some sort of miracle worker to patch up this relationship.

I decided to take my son to the park the next day and see if i could patch things up with my son through our new dog. I decided that his name was going to be Kevin. I asked my son if this name was ok but all i heard was silence. I decided to ignore this silence and decided that this name fit him fine.Once we got to the park, i tried to interact Kevin and my son, but to no avail, nothing i tried worked. I had brought a frisbee to throw but kevin wouldn't move. I had brought a tennis ball, but still no movement. Lastly, i had brought some treats to see if we could motivate him to try some tricks, but this dog was as stiff as my son! All they did the whole time was sit next to each other on the ground, watching me make a fool out of myself. I saw a hot dog cart driving by and decided to get us all one. As i was walking back, i caught a glimpse of my son petting Kevin's fur and smiling. This was the first time i had seen Kevin smiling in weeks, and was happy that i was a part of it. However, once my son noticed me staring, he quickly pulled his hand away from Kevin and hid all emotion.

As i sat down next to Kevin and handed my son his hot dog, Kevin began eyeing the hot dog with a crazy look in his eye as if he would grab it at any second. I managed to get the hot dog to my son without Kevin biting my hand off, and turned to see my bitten half off. I looked at who i thought was the culprit, and heard a small chuckle from my son. My dog had eaten my hot dog! He had the slyest look on his face as if he knew that i knew, but he enjoyed watching my anger. I had to let it go, however, and went to buy another hot dog from the vender. This time, Kevin decided to join me, and walked behind me as if he was trying to act sneaky. As i got to the vender, Kevin slowly walked to my side, waiting for me to bring him more food. As i bought the hot dog, he began to bend his legs down and readied to pounce. I noticed, however, and quickly raised my hot dog out of his range. He realized that he had no chance and slowly walked away with his head down. He had been defeated, and he knew it.

We decided that we had had our fun at the park and decided that it was time to head home. As we were heading home, we noticed that Kevin was acting very strange and that it seemed like he was somewhat spooked. As we pulled into our driveway, it seemed like it was more of a struggle to get Kevin out of the car than it should have been. As we got him into the house, he began hiding under the tables and running from us when we tried to calm him. It seemed as if we weren't friends anymore, as if he didn't like us. As we got closer, he began sprinting away from us. He ran straight through the glass door and into the streets, away from the family that loved him.

We ran outside after him and was blinded by the beautiful sunset he was running towards. As he faded into the orange sky, we realized that he wasn't going to be able to survive on his own. We began chasing him, waving of my wife that we would find him. We chased after him, only seeing glimpses of his fur, or the tip of his tail. But we trudged on, not caring that we had been running for hours. As we slowly started to see less and less of Kevin, we began to realize that our efforts were futile and nothing could help us but Kevin simply stopping. However, he didn't, and we had lost the one thing that brought me and my son together, and we could never replace it.

We decided that we would sleep at a hotel for the night and stay until we could find him. We used the local printer there to print out a couple of fliers to post around the neighborhood. We had had a long day chasing after Kevin and decided to rest before our "big day" tomorrow. Even after i had taken some benadryl, i couldn't seem to fall asleep. After many failed attempts, i started to see the golden rays of a new day beginning to shine. It was beautiful, but under the circumstances i was in, nothing seemed as happy as it should have been. I woke up my son and decided that it was time to start searching again. We walked out of our hotel room and began on our hunt again.

First we started looking around the hotel to see if there were any signs of him. We started looking around the dumpsters to see if he may have dug in there. There was no sign of him, which we had expected. Then, we decided to look around some neighborhoods from where we lost him. The neighborhood was called Real Palms. It was a fairly rich neighborhood that me and my wife had visited when we were looking for houses. We began going house to house asking if anyone had heard anything last night. Most people looked at us if we were crazy, because this neighborhood was gated and was very secure. We continued on however, and were rejected several times from very annoyed older men and women. We began walking out of the community when i had a strange idea. If this place was gated, then thats means that Kevin would have had to go under the gate, plus, he would have been caught in the camera. We stopped at the gate and asked the man if he had seen anything weird last night.

"Why yes i did," he said, " it looked sorta like a yellow beast running down the road. I almost called it in, but i thought i was just seeing things."

We politely asked him if we could see the tape from last night to see if it was what we were looking for. He showed us the tape, which started at 9 o'clock, right around when we had stopped chasing Kevin. He had to fast forward a little because it was just like any other day. However, once less and less people began going home, something had run through fast. We asked him to replay and to slow it down. It showed a blonde dog running underneath the gate. When had just found a clue to where Kevin may have gone. We asked him to show us some other views from cameras around the neighborhood. We saw Kevin sprinting out and away from this neighborhood, into the darkness of San Francisco. We saw which gate he had gone out, and started heading that way. With only a few hours left, we knew that if we wanted to find him, we had to hurry.

Once we reached the gate, we checked the surroundings for any sign of Kevin. We saw a bush right next to the gate that seemed to have been pushed downwards, so we checked around that area. We saw a trail that led towards the Redwood forest. We knew that if he had stayed there all night, we might not ever see him again. It got very cold at night, and i can't even imagine how cold it would have been if he had stayed out there all night.

We continues through the bush and on the trail until it parted down two different paths. We looked to see if there were any signs of him to five us any clues, but there weren't any. We decided to head down the left path, but we ended up coming to a wall. So, we turned around and headed down the right one. As we were walking down this path, the vegetation started to get very wild. It came to the point where neither of is could have fit through without shrinking down to the size of a dog. With this failure still in our minds, we turned around and looked for any other clues.

As we headed back to where we started, we noticed how dark it had become. We decided to call it a night, and headed back to the hotel