On Missing Dog Posters and People Who Try To Take Advantage

Vinny went missing on a Sunday afternoon and by Monday afternoon we were already getting “prank calls” from people claiming to have found him.

In between one of my many drives from our house to the camp site where Chris last saw Vinny, roughly a forty five minute drive with no service whatsoever past the thirty minute mark, Kacie, my sweet friend who graciously offered to put her phone number on the missing posters, called me to announce just as I was about to drive out of service area, “Tay! Someone found Vinny! They’ve got him in their car.”

“What? What?” I couldn’t turn around fast enough. Our call was cutting in and out but I was desperate to keep her on the line, "Kacie! Did you say someone has Vinny?”

“Yes! They just called. It’s a girl and her mom. They sound super sweet.”

I can still feel the relief I felt in that moment. The way my I scrunched my face together and nodded my head, holding one large optimistic breath high in my chest until I released it and filled my car with an energy that literally made my cheeks feel tingly. Someone found my boy. I knew it would happen.

“I’m pulling over, where are they? I’ll go to them right now.” Vinny, Vinny, I’m coming to you. I’m coming buddy, I was repeating it in my head. Tears already flowing. Fucking Vinny.

“They said they’re near the campground listed, hold on I wrote down the cross streets.”

As Kacie recited two streets I’d driven by repeatedly in the last twenty four hours I knew their exact location. “I know where that is, I can be there in five!”

“Okay, let me call them back and tell them you’re headed their way.”

The moment I hung up with Kacie I tried to call Chris. But his phone went straight to voicemail because he was in the no service area still walking trails looking for Vinny, but I couldn’t help myself from trying. God, he was going to be so happy. This was finally over.

As soon as I saw Kacie’s name light up on my phone, I whipped around in my car once more so I could head back toward the camp area.

“I told them you’re on your way, but Tay—”

I was barely listening now, driving much faster than I should have because I greedily wanted to be there for the reunion. I wanted to see the moment these strangers opened their car door and my sweet little wiggly boy jumped out- whether into my arms or Chris’s, I didn’t care. I just wanted to be there for it. I could see us nuzzling Vinny’s head and scratching his ears, jokingly getting upset with him for making us worry so much. It was so real I could feel it.

And then I heard Kacie say, “Tay, they asked for a small reward. Like $60.”

“$60? Sure! That’s not a big deal. But I’ll pay more, because I was about to post on Facebook I’d pay $500. Should I offer that much? Because I feel bad that I was going to offer that so it feels like the right thing to do.”

“They wondered if you could send it on paypal?” This is when Kacie started to cut out because I was driving out of service.

The moment I heard the word “paypal” all of the buzzy energy that I’d just been engulfed in, turned stagnant and heavy. I had to roll down my energy in fear it might swallow me if I didn’t let some fresh air in. And once again, just like when I could feel the rush recalling the initial thought that Vinny had been found, I can still feel the crash of knowing it was scam. As I type this now, I have the urge to crack my neck and roll my head because my entire body has tensed.

Is this a trigger or just a memory? Maybe both. But it feels similar to the moment I asked a friend to help me hang a birthday banner at Chris’s 40th birthday celebration two weeks ago when my head suddenly felt heavy and my stomach dropped. Why is this making me sick, I wondered. What is this painful deja-vu? And then it came to me. I saw myself with this same friend, months earlier, helping hang a birthday banner at her daughter’s cookie-decorating birthday party.

“I think you need a type A friend to help hang this,” I joked as I looked over my sloppy decorating work. About twenty minutes later I’d get a text from Chris that Vinny had gone missing.

I hadn’t thought of any of those little interactions from that day, but apparently my body hadn’t forgotten them.

Once again, I turned my car back around so I could get better service and tell Kacie it was a scam. I also called my friend Aly and told her not to post the reward for $500 like I had asked her to do, I could already see it wouldn’t lead to good things. Kacie would go on to receive several calls like the one mentioned, with varying degrees of lies offered and amounts of money requested. What a sad, crumbling state of being someone must be in to feel the need to do such a thing.

I wanted to dwell, because boy do I love dwelling, but I knew there simply wasn’t time. Instead, I put on Vinny’s favorite manifesting frequency on Spotify (yes this is a real thing, yes I’ll share on insta so you can hear it if you’re interested) and I started the drive back to our house. Chris and I needed dry socks because ours were soaking from walking in the river and warmer clothes would be required for the evening.

A pack of wild turkeys stood in the road near a small town, if one can even call Willard, Washington a town, and made me wait for them to cross. I took it as a sign. I also seriously considered finding some of their shit and covering some of Vinny’s favorite items in it… the boy had his kinks.

*sorry for any errors or typos!