The Search For Maggie

I got a visit from my good friend Abbie this morning. Since arriving at the Bridge months ago, she has been looking for her Shih Tzu sister Maggie, to no avail. At her wit's end, she appealed to me for help. 

 

The powers that govern the Bridge try to keep siblings together, but with hundreds of thousands of pups passing over a day, it is easy for a dog to slip through the cracks and get lost.

 

I immediately seized on the most straightforward solution and told Abbie to wait for Maggie to appear in her mom's dream and tell her where her sister was. Abbie told me she had but wished she hadn't. Maggie had left her section to find her sister and was lost in the wilderness. 

 

Rumor was years ago, a dog named Moses left with his followers to find a land promised to him by a sibling and ended up wandering in the bridge desert for 40 years. That wasn't good. We couldn't let Maggie do the same. She might miss her mom's arrival, and that's would be a tragedy. 

 

I needed some advice, so I assembled my small council of advisors. Geordie excitedly reported he had created a new invention. It does smell what an amplifier does to sound. Maggie could pick up the smell hundreds of miles away, follow it and find

Her sister. We decided to give it a try. 

 

Abbie stood still as Geordie put what he called the smell amplifier 2000 around her neck. He turned it on, but nothing happened. He removed it from Abbie's neck and put it on the ground. He fixed it and was going to test it by putting it in a pile of leaves. Soon the whole Bridge would smell like a mid-October day. Just as Geordie turned it on, a skunk emerged from the pile and began to spray. The smell was so bad and widespread we had to shut down the Bridge for three days while it rained tomato

juice to get the smell out.

 

When the odor was gone, we met again and immediately passed a motion to dismiss any ideas proposed by Geordie. Then we got back to the matter at paw. Aran suggested I get one of my birds to search for Maggie from the sky. I had a better idea. The bird would carry Pocket by the collar, and she could search for Maggie.

 

"Excuse me?" Pocket, who had been chewing on a bone and not paying attention, asked. I told her my search plan. "I don't think so," she said. I explained that it had to be her because she was the smallest. Selfish Pocket still balked, but Abbie begged her to try. Pocket can't say no to a friend, and soon she was in the mouth of my best eagle Roe, searching for Maggie.

 

It indeed was a superb plan. Pocket could see for miles, and I think she was on the hunt, but angry dogs from other districts, upset that they had to spend three days inside because of the skunk cloud, used a catapult to launch poop at Pocket and Roe, causing them to retreat, and return home Maggie-less.

 

I was worried that we had no way to unite Maggie when Chey came up with a brilliant idea. We would acquire silent fireworks, shoot them into the sky where they would spell: "Maggie: It's Abbie. I am here." Maggie will follow it, and they will finally meet. We voted to buy the fireworks.

 

I asked my financial advisor Hobo to go with me to the cat side. The only place to buy fireworks is a shop in their village owned by Siamese twins. When we arrived, one was sitting on the counter and another by a window. I got a stern look from Hobo when I said I thought they would be connected, and he told me they were not that kind of Siamese. Despite me getting the negotiations off to a bad start, Hobo negotiated a fair price, and we brought them back to Doggyspace Villiage and set them off.  

 

Chey was right. Maggie saw the fireworks high in the sky and followed them. Two hours later, she emerged from the woods, and she and Abbie shared a long hug, and then we had a massive party for her. Maggie told her stories, and we told her ours. Then Maggie went to Abbie's house. That night they visited their mom together. Hopefully, two dogs visiting will make her mom feels twice as good as one.