Clyde Chronicles

I had an hour window in the middle of momming and teaching a class at MSU to retrieve my three-year-old pup from the trainer and grab my son from middle school. Who’s a good boy? I asked Clyde, our black pug/Boston terrier mix, in the passenger seat as we inched up for a quick car wash. He seemed fine when we paid the cashier at Perfect Shine in Woodland Park; his tail wagged happily as our car dripped with suds, but when we sat outside to wait, he became skittish. Clyde wedged his leash under the bench, wiggled loose from his ID collar, and took off running toward Party City and Pizza Hut. He ran across two shopping plaza lots, then tore into the oncoming traffic of Rt 46 West, where he scaled the divider of this six-lane highway. When I reached the edge, expecting the worst, a driver pulled in, rolled down his window, and yelled, “Did you see that!? Crazy dog just jumped over the median and made it across without dying! If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I would not believe it.” I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t find my words to respond. A stranger, whose vehicle was ahead of mine at the car wash, who ran to the lip of the highway with me said, “We’ll take our cars, go to the other side, and find him.” I believed her.

We raced to the other side, and then I got out to walk the streets behind the Little Falls Rec, into the woods and residential backyards, calling Clyde’s name. The kindness of strangers began to overtake me when people in cars stopped to ask if I’d seen a black dog after another caring individual who had witnessed Clyde on the highway posted the incident on Facebook. Around three o’clock, a gracious Totowa mom brought my middle schooler home with hers for a playdate. It was four, then five o’clock. Family and friends started waving me down, everyone packing dog treats and words of encouragement. Community empathy encircled my panic as I followed footpaths down to the Passaic River. I could not go home without this dog. I could not face my family or tell Bonnie—Clyde’s Boston Terrier mate, that Mommy had just lost her life partner for a car wash. Six o'clock, then seven, then it was pitch-black-dark out before a young police officer, who had taken his flashlight back into the woods upon my request, told me gently, “You need to go home.”

The instantaneous connection of social media is not to be undervalued in times of crisis—the thread of Clyde sightings as this dog charged with full force across Main Street in Little Falls, then fled from concerned teenagers near Tank Park to eventually cross county lines into Cedar Grove—nothing less than amaze-balls. A thousand prayers on the typically argumentative tri-town page of Woodland Park, Totowa, and Little Falls, cocooning my family with support and shielding Clyde from harm.

Day four: Clyde is still missing. Flyers up, shelters visited, police stations stalked. Friends in Cedar Grove mobilizing their friends to conduct searches at all hours of the day and night. A comment read: Who are these people that the world is looking for their dog? It wasn’t us, but the genuine compassion of others. Another possible sighting on Myrtle, then in the hilltop development of Park Ridge Estates. Then, silence. February cold. On Valentine’s Day, it rains. I take long, deep breaths but can’t find my exhale. Day eight. My husband Chris receives two separate calls from scam artists who claim they have Clyde but require passwords to weird websites. Day nine: We’ve stopped talking about Clyde at the dinner table. I’ve stopped calling the shelters. The energy in our home has shifted—we are more careful with our words and more affectionate with Bonnie. Pain is where one’s spirit widens to fill an aching void. Rumi says it this way: The wound is where light enters.

Day 10. Evening. Another unknown number pings on my husband's phone. I think we have your dog, it reads. Chris says it’s scammer number three. Send a pic, he responds, without pausing our Netflix binge. A minute later, a photo of our baby boy Clyde—all skin and bones but otherwise unscathed. Another righteous human, a Park Ridge Estates resident who leaves food on her front steps for stray cats, had lured Clyde into her home after he set off her porch lights. Light cancels out darkness. Be bright.