The Dog Days of Summer

Last weekend, we took a quick jaunt to St George. I'll post about that when I get time, it was a fun trip. But the excitement happened when we got home. We were only gone from Friday until Sunday afternoon, and asked our neighbor to watch our dog. Not thinking it all through, when she told me that they would be gone for the day on Saturday, I told her it wasn't at all a problem. Put Chester in the back yard, with food and water, and let him in when you get home. Seemed all simple and straight forward. Chester spends a lot of time in the backyard when we aren't home. There's plenty of shade, lots of running room, things to bark at, and no messes in the house. Simple enough. Well, in the whole thing I didn't take into consideration that it was in fact the 4th of July on Saturday and that maybe the noise would be enough to freak him out. Evidently, it was enough to freak him out.
We got a call from the neighbors at 12:30 am on Sunday morning, telling us that our dog was nowhere to be found, and there was a small hole under the gate in which they thought he may have squeezed out of.
Honestly my first thought was something to the effect..."Da*n Dog, I hope he never comes back." But realized soon that he was too much of a wimp to be out all night in unfamiliar surroundings, and I really thought that he would be sitting on the front step in the morning. I told the dear neighbor not to worry about him, and see what happened in the morning. Knowing that we would be home in the afternoon, if he still hadn't shown up, we could go looking for him.
But the phone call came in the morning, that Chester was still nowhere to be found.
Steve and I decided that we wouldn't tell the boys about his disappearance until after we got home, because we didn't want them crying all the way home from St George. So we left that surprise to spring on them when we pulled into the driveway.
Well, that night we searched and searched with no luck and decided to start calling shelters Monday morning. To make a long story shorter, we did finally locate him at the West Jordan shelter around noon. He had only just been brought in and had been found on Sunday and kept in someones garage until Monday morning.
He was exhausted and almost immediately after arriving at home, began to limp. I hoped that he was just tired and we just let him sleep. But each time he would stand the limping seemed to get worse. Plus he wouldn't eat or drink anything. That all bought him a trip to the vet. Apparently he was just so exhausted that eating and drinking weren't important, so we were given tips to help him eat if he doesn't do more on his own. But also, the limping is due to the fact that this dog rarely leaves the back yard or the house. I guess running down a hot road/sidewalk on pampered pads causes blisters burns and rubbed off pads altogether.
The benefits with his new condition is that when the doorbell rings, he barks once but wont stand to go to the door. And there is no worrying about him running away at this point.
I hope he has learned his lesson, but also hope he feels better soon. He sure is a sad looking patient.