Lost and Found

Teddy and I were flying solo this weekend while Dave and AJ spent some quality time at the land. This morning we ran errands, and Teddy sat nicely in AJ's car seat. That's not always the case, since Teddy can unbuckle himself from that seat, which is why we reserve it for short trips. I didn't have the garage door opener in the vehicle, so I hopped out to open the garage door when we got home. I pulled in, parked and took the first load into the house, shutting the garage door as I went. I dropped the load and returned to the car for the second load and immediately noticed something was missing: Teddy.

It's normal for him to remain in the car while we unload or to unbuckle and play in the garage. This was not normal.

I immediately realized he had snuck out before the garage door shut and had a 30-60 second head start on me. I opened the garage door, frantically scanned outside, double-checked the garage and quickly called in the house for good measure.

Then I sprinted around the house, looking for any signs he went into the pond. Seeing none, I dashed up front and was ready to beeline to the neighbor's open garage door when another neighbor called that she had him.

Her boys had seen Teddy walk across their yard without me right behind him, alerted their mom and went after him. He made it to the next neighbor's house, where I found her holding his hand.

Teddy and I returned home with my heart racing. He may have only been gone for realistically 2-3 minutes, but that's long enough for something horrible to happen. Without the ability to speak and with water literally in our backyard, there's an awful lot of potential for awful to happen.

Thankfully, that wasn't the case today. We returned home safely, where I promptly thanked my neighbors via texts. We have incredible neighbors, and Teddy's guardian angel definitely has its hands full.

We went to the park this afternoon to make some positive memories.