The disappering dog

To the Editor: About 10 years ago, we brought home an 8-week-old, very active, white boxer puppy with a brown patch enclosing her right eye, who we named Patches. She was adorable and would spend the days keeping my mother-in-law, Evelyn (God bless her soul), occupied while we went to work. Everything was going well until the day the phone call came. Evelyn called in a panic. She couldn’t find the dog, it had disappeared. I immediately called my husband and we had a three-way conversation. It went like this. Ev: “I put her in the bathroom for a minute while I answered the door, and when I went back to let her out, she was gone.” Us: “OK, first let’s walk through the house. We’ll find her.” Ev, frantic by this time: “You’ll have to come right home, I don’t know where she could be.” Us: “You didn’t open any outside doors, right?” Ev: “No.” She’s practically in tears now. Us: “OK, calm down, talk to me while you walk through the house.” So she proceeded to tell us room-by-room, looking under beds, in closets, everywhere. Still no Patches. Then she went downstairs into the rec room, into the office, all the time talking to us on the phone ... still no Patches. Then she went into the laundry room, looking in every nook and cranny. Ev: “Oh my God.” Us: “What, what???,” as we thought the worst. Ev: “She’s in the laundry chute.” Yep, the upstairs bathroom has a swinging door that goes to a laundry chute. Laughing hysterically, we hung up. But, before that, we heard Evelyn say to Patches, “Don’t you ever do that again, you almost gave me a heart attack!” Nancy Argento