Weekend Adventures

This is a bit late, and a story entirely devoid of Keely, so I apologize!

One of my two best friends, Julie, left on Monday with her husband to travel to Ukraine to adopt their second son, Vladik. (post on your blog so I know you got there safe PLEASE!) They felt a bit bad about leaving both of their dogs with Julie's parents (who are also taking care of Jackson) for the 3 weeks that Keith will be in Ukraine, so I offered to keep their female dog, Shirley. Shirley has stayed with us before and she loves Jake so we thought it would be fine.
  On Friday, Julie and I met each other for dinner and to do the dog swap in Ringgold, GA (its almost exactly in the center). We had a great dinner and Julie only got a bit sad when she put Shirley in my car and said goodbye. The drive home was uneventful, I pulled into the driveway and opened the garage and then the car door. We hadn't used a leash to transfer Shirley at Ruby Tuesday's so I didn't bother at home. Shirley ran after me into the garage to the back door, but then Hershey barked and Shirley took off. At first she just ran to the end of the neighborhood and we thought she was doing the same things our dogs would do...checking out the surroundings. When she stopped to pee, I approached her and she took off out of the neighborhood!
  Now if you've ever seen where we live you know there are a million streets near our house and several small patches of woods. I got in the car and tried to find her for 30 minutes, then finally called Julie and told her. She immediately said "We'll all get in the car and be there in 3 hours. She'll come when she hears my voice." I found out afterwards we both bawled on our husbands after that call. For the next 2 hours I drove around and around, exchanging texts with Julie and getting more and more hopeless. I was sure Julie was wasting her time coming up.
    Finally I spotted Shirley, but as soon as I hopped out of the car and approached her she took off. I spent the next hour stalking the dog, seeing her about 4 more times, all in a relatively small area.  The last 20 minutes I parked in front of some apartments and just watched Shirley, knowing if I approached her she'd take off but wanting to keep close to her.  As soon as Julie's family pulled up and Julie got out, Shirley ran right up to her. I'm pretty sure she knew EXACTLY what she was doing with her little stunt.
Shirley and I are no longer friends!