Diana Rankin

This is the story of Sienna and Lacey, of that which is lost and found, of the heroine’s journey we are all asked to take. It took place several years ago with two of my rescue dogs who have long since crossed the rainbow bridge. Yet it is a story that knows nothing about time. May its reading enrich your life.

It was a brrr-cold day in February when Sienna disappeared. It wasn’t the first time she had run away, but it was the first time since she had come to live with me.

Sienna walked into my life when the local shelter called. I heard the words Sheltie, scared, and unadoptable all in the same breath. Before another breath, I agreed to adopt her, but nothing could have prepared me for the condition she was in.

She cowed at the back of the crate. Her eyes, cautious with suspicion, were two brown circles of distrust. One ear was ripped and flopped over while the other stood straight up, alert to danger. The once white yoke around her neck looked like muddy sand and she smelled like socks peeled off after a day of hiking.

Her matted fur was thinned by a recent pregnancy; her pups gone, and she abandoned. Her abused body and fearful manner spoke too much of a history no living being should ever know. Still, something beneath the fear in her eyes showed a curiosity and sense of wonder like a spot of blue sky on a cloud-dark day. Attempting to calm her with words and treats ignored, I slowly reached toward her. Her thin body shook as she swiveled her head from side-to-side, her fear pounding against her chest with every breath.

Sienna calmed a bit on our drive home, and slowly, over the months, we built trust. She gained weight and her fur softened into its natural rustic brown, like iron-rich soil. The mantle around her neck turned as white as the snow that lay over the farm fields surrounding our home in rural Ohio. She stayed close to me as we walked through the seasons. She even began to trust other humans as long as they met her at her two-foot-high-eye level. Then the unthinkable happened.

On that winter day when Sienna disappeared, we had gone into West Liberty, a three-stop-light town, to buy her a new harness. We were getting out of the car when a truck horn blasted. It’s echoed boomeranged and banged against us. Sienna jerked. Her collar shifted high onto her head. Then it slipped over her ears.

I grabbed for her. Frightened, she backed away, slipping toward the dangers of Main Street’s morning traffic. Life moved in slow motion. Then it stopped. Both stiff with fear, the chill in our bones rattled too loudly to hear one another. In one long breath, I watched, helpless, as Sienna vanished among pick-up trucks, cars, semis, and farm vehicles.

Night and exhaustion came together on that first day of searching, but the hunt for Sienna wasn’t over. For the next seven-plus months, I followed every lead. In howling winds, I tramped across frozen fields in knee-deep snow, drove country roads, and walked ice-covered woods.

In this time of loss, I was totally lost to myself. I put food into my mouth and chewed. I stood and sat and moved, my body’s demands guiding me. Life was written in a strange code for which my brain had not yet received instructions. There was simplicity in all this, this act of living on remote in spite of grief and guilt and pain. As the days dragged into weeks a new normal began to emerge.

My life—centered on finding Sienna—took on a sense of urgency. I slept little, kept vigil for a bark that didn’t come. I lived in a heightened state of awareness, a keen sense of the present moment, fueled by adrenaline. I posted flyers everywhere—grocery stores, gas stations, gift shops—handed them to people in restaurants, stopped delivery people on rural routes, talked to everyone who would listen. Constantly, I called the humane societies, dog wardens, and Sheltie rescues.

Sienna was answering what author Joseph Campbell describes as the “call to adventure” in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The hero—or heroine in this case—is summoned by destiny. Accepting the call upsets the balance of life, throwing the heroine into circumstances where she faces great danger and receives great rewards. Once called, she must answer. There is work to be attended to of a nature greater than that of her current life.

There was a hole in my heart that I stopped trying to heal. My anguish pushed me into the darkness where I felt stripped of all I knew, including myself. When the darkness claims us there is little choice but to sit in its stillness. Did Sienna know that I too would take this journey without getting lost, trusting that by some alchemic means as we walked through the darkness, we’d receive the gift of healing to restore and renew us?  

Along the way, I learned patience until the darkness itself began to morph into a dazzling stillness that shone brilliantly. In the haze of unknowing, wisdom emerged—the wisdom of loving the moment and releasing the next; of appreciating all that is and letting go of all else; of living the small moments with gratitude and graciousness; of believing Sienna was cared for, not by human hands, but by all that I could not see; of knowing a greater story was unfolding, and it was for me to take my journey as Sienna took hers.

In the meantime, a call came about another lost Sheltie. She ran away when her owner died. The relative who took her in didn’t want her. Would I help find her and give her a home? Of course. Although scared, Lacey wasn’t as frightened of people as Sienna. Once spotted in the mountain’s woods, Lacey came to me, eagerly accepting the food I offered. She would not take Sienna’s place; she would be loved on her own as who she was.

As winter gave way to spring and spring to summer, I received each day as it was given to me instead of forcing it into my predisposed mold. I came to terms with Sienna’s absence, allowing the grief to be salved with the gifts of my own growth. I put one foot in front of another until those steps began to add up to a life. Every day held pleasant surprises—a smile from a child, a note from a friend, an invitation from a stranger to go ahead at the grocery check-out, Lacey’s happiness, the love and cuddles from my three cats—the little miracles life brings.

Patience often comes not as a self-imposed virtue, but as a life-imposed requisite. Never once did I have the patience to endure Sienna’s sojourn, but she was gone, and I could accept that or not. It was time to let go, stop chasing leads, and live without her. I surrendered.

Then the call. “I know where your dog is.”

Sienna. We found her, 17 miles from home and hiding in a bramble bush. In her eyes was a new confidence born of hardship. Cautiously, I moved toward her. She lay still. Watching, letting me come almost within touching distance. Then she ran.

I went to the car and asked Lacey for help. Together we followed Sienna to a nearby shed where she stood behind farm equipment. “Sienna,” I said, “Let’s go home.” She lay down. I put on her new harness; one she couldn’t slip out of. She looked at me with an innocence and trust that washed away the months of grief. Lacey walked up to her. They sniffed one another with a knowing of each other’s plight. Then they walked over to me as sisters coming home after a long-fought journey.

The search was over. Sienna was in my arms. There were no marching bands, no crowds cheering. Instead, there was a hush, a realm where earthly sounds don’t penetrate. I heard our three hearts beat as one and it was the heartbeat of the whole universe.