Teresa Rhyne - Poppy in the Wild

POPPY IN THE WILD

Pegasus Books, Ltd.

148 W 37th Street, 13th Floor

New York, NY 10018

Copyright 2020 by Teresa J. Rhyne

First Pegasus Books cloth edition October 2020

Interior design by Maria Fernandez

Jacket design: Faceout Studio, Molly von Borstel

Front photo credit: Kimberly Saxelby, True Emotions Photography

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-64313-542-7

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-64313-543-4

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

www.pegasusbooks.com

For Mike and Babs, for all you do for lost dogs everywhere. And for lost beings everywhere, may you find your way home.

1. Teresa and Chriss home.
2. Where Poppy twisted out of her harness and fled.
3. The point the Whistle GPS tracker gave us when Poppy entered Sycamore Canyon Wildlife Park.
4. Final GPS location before the battery died. She had been circling this area since 9:30 P.M. and the spot stopped moving around 1 :00 A.M. , before the battery died at 4:00 A.M.
5. Where volunteer Justine encountered the jogger who said she had seen Poppy near a homeless encampment.
6. First warming station and Teresa stakeout.
7. While canvassing this neighborhood, a neighbor claimed to have seen Poppy walk up the driveway, sniff the garage, and then bark at the front door in response to the owner Less dogs.
8. Teresa was offered a warming box and sat here from appx. 6 P.M. until 11 P.M. on Thursday night. Trail camera showed no photos or activity.
9. Received a phone call Friday evening at 6:29 P.M. from Elise to report she had seen Poppy come out of the bushes and onto the field on the lower trail near the baseball diamond while walking her dog. Poppy then fled up the hill and disappeared.
10. Teresa received a call from Jennifer on Friday morning at 8:54 A.M. that Poppy had approached their sliding glass door from their backyard facing the park and had barked at Jennifers dogs inside. When Jennifer tried to open the door to let Poppy in, she ran away. Said she was wearing a collar.
11. From the stakeout appx. half mile away, Chris heard dogs barking, and saw a white speck running from north to south on Farside trail before the dog disappeared.
12. Chris was on stakeout facing northwest when he heard dogs barking, heard a high-pitched reply bark, then saw a small white creature run down Farside trail from north to south. Approximately three quarters of a mile from dogs location.
13. Neighbor Gordon said he saw the dog in his backyard, but when he approached she ran away.

I have recounted this story to the best of my recollection, which may be foggy given my exhaustion during the real time events. Some names were changed and some characters are composites for the sake of story and privacy. Conversations are relayed from my memory, my journal, and, more often, text messages, but sometimes cleaned up for the sake of the story and your ease of readingbecause people hiking or sitting stakeout for a beagle arent really worried about spelling or grammar, nor should they be. The dogs comments, thoughthose are verbatim.

This is how its supposed to be.

Thats what I was thinking as I cruised east on Californias Highway 46, the part that takes you through the rolling hillsgolden or green, depending on the time of yearalways dotted with cows, more of them in the spring, when the super bloom also wraps the hillside in orange poppies and purple lupine. I always like this part of the drive. It makes me happy.

Soon enough, though, all would change. Id get to the hundreds of pumpjacksthose rocking, smelly, environment-destroying oil pumps also known as nodding donkeys, oil horses, and thirsty birds (cute names for such nasty equipment, no?). Next, Id drive past Lost Hills, the little company town built for agriculture workers by a billionaire in a failed attempt to appear benevolent. And then Id hit Interstate 5 and the stench of the concentrated animal feeding operation where those cows, who once stood on the lush, beautiful hillsides, now stand in their own feces awaiting slaughter. (I am not going to think about how this drive might be symbolic of my life; you should avoid thinking about that too.)

Everything after Highway 46 made the drive worse for me, every month without fail. But in that moment things were as they should be: me, cruising down the highway toward home, Jimmy Buffett on the radio, breeze blowing through my hair, happy, oblivious cows trotting in line down the hillside to my right, and an adorable hound dog safely settled in a crate in the back seat of my Subaru Forester.

Okay, thats not exactly right. I mean sure, there was a dog in my car. Theres usually a dog in my car. But this wasnt my dog and there was no breeze tousling my hairI never leave the windows down when Im driving. I cant stand the noise. Also, it was November and very chilly. And come to think of it, cool wind in my hair is an Eagles lyric, not Jimmy Buffett. Odds are also good it was NPR or an audiobook playing for the drive, not Jimmy or the Eagles, despite the desert highway I was on. Also, I said I was driving home and I really dont know if thats correct. Home is a very difficult concept for me.

As a child, I lived in houses in a variety of Southern California suburbsNorth Hollywood, Sylmar, La Habra Heights, La Habra (the literal downward slide must be noted)while my parents worked on their unworkable marriage, divorcing, remarrying, divorcing again. The houses were filled with enough anger and angst to rarely feel like home. There was also the very 1970s every other weekend home with my father and his second wife (third marriage, if youre counting) in two more houses, with one more sibling added.

My mother remarried too, and I gained a stepfather. They lived in separate homes for a decade or so before finally buying a house together and then eventually packing up and leaving that house in California for another house in Missouri. I visited all those houses, of course, but they were not my home.

My father divorced again, and remarried two more times (four wives, five marriages if youre still trying to keep track, but in his defense, wife number three likely would have lasted had she not passed away from a brain aneurysm suffered while standing in her kitchen baking Christmas cookies). Each of these marriages brought multiple step-siblings and at least one move to yet another house, effectively ensuring there was no place that was home for me for holidays or any other reason.