Kat pulled herself up the bank right behind me and we both set off down the footpath, yelling, “Callie, wanna treat?”

I ran ahead of Kat. Not fifty yards away, I couldn’t hear even her behind me; the sound of rushing water from the creek bounced off the trees and seemed to come from everywhere. There was no way Callie could hear us. A sense of panic started rising in my chest. I couldn’t go back to Helen and Maddy without Callie.

The path came to an end at the edge of a side stream feeding into Sope Creek. With nowhere else to go, I slid down an embankment and waded back into the creek. Hopping from rock to rock, I made my way slowly downstream toward the Hooch. Kat was at least a hundred yards back. I continued to call out for Callie, but even if she was nearby, I doubted that she heard me.

A couple was sunbathing on a rock in the middle of the creek.

“Did you see a little black dog?” I asked.

They shook their heads.

The search operation had now been going on for ten minutes. Callie was nowhere to be seen. I tried to listen for the jangling of her dog tags, but all I could hear was the water and the laughter of a group of teenagers a little farther down the creek.

Keep going or turn back? Callie was in unfamiliar territory. There was no way to know what she would do. Given her fascination with squirrels and chipmunks, she could have gone anywhere in the forest.

The teenagers’ laughter got louder. Foolishly, I resented it. I had just lost another dog, and it was all my fault. What was there to laugh about?

Then I saw why the teens were laughing. They were pointing at something moving at high speed through the creek.

It was Callie. She was half jumping and half swimming, in hot pursuit of a gaggle of young geese.

“Callie!” I screamed. “Come here, girl!”

She didn’t hear me.

The geese were not particularly coordinated and couldn’t fly very well. The whole group was moving erratically from one side of the creek to the other. And then the geese turned to backtrack upstream.

They flew by, barely above the water. A second later, Callie screamed by, just out of reach. With her attention focused on the geese, she didn’t even notice me.

“Callie!”

The scrum was headed for Kat.

Kat made a leap to grab Callie, but her timing was off, and Kat splayed out on a rock, empty-handed.

I started making my way upstream again. It would have been faster if I could get to the bank and run up the path, but I would risk missing Callie in the water. I could make out her splashing about a hundred yards away, still in pursuit of the geese. Kat was wading through the rapids but not making much progress either.

“She’s coming back!” Kat yelled.

For reasons only the geese knew, they had decided to make another 180-degree change in course. Four fluffy goslings were flapping straight at me. This was going to be my last chance.

Not wanting to frighten the geese into another course change, I remained motionless in the center of the water. They whizzed by in a chorus of discontent. The bounding water dog was a few seconds behind them, oblivious to anything but the chase.

As she closed to within ten yards, I called out in my happy voice, “Callie! Good Girl!”

It was enough to momentarily divert her attention from the birds. She glanced over at me. I lunged out and snagged her collar with a finger.

Drawing her in for a hug, I gloried in the smell of wet dog.

“Callie, you crazy dog. We almost lost you!”

She let out a heavy sigh as she watched her prey vanish downriver.

I carried her back to the bank and towed her to where the girls were waiting. Helen immediately buried her face in Callie’s slicked-back fur.

Callie after shootin’ the Hooch.

(Gregory Berns)

“Dad!” she exclaimed. “Don’t ever do that again!”

Kat pulled up, holding her hand.

“What happened?” I asked. She held out her left hand. Her ring finger was bent at an awkward angle. She had dislocated her finger trying to catch Callie. It was beginning to swell.

“I have to take off my wedding ring,” she said, “or it might have to be cut off.” I didn’t know it at the time, but it would be a year before that finger returned to normal size and she could wear her ring again.

I was relieved that we had Callie back. The episode made me realize that despite all of our high-tech training for the MRI, I still didn’t have a clue as to what she was thinking.

By the time we got home, Callie had already shrugged off her trip downriver, and the kids had taken to exercising their creativity on the stack of boogie boards in the basement. The nearest ocean was three hundred miles away, so something else had to substitute for water. It didn’t take them long to figure out that sliding down the carpeted steps was a hoot.

Helen and Maddy laid out pillows at the bottom of the steps. In rapid fire, they placed a board at the top of the stairs and went shooting down into the pillow pit. Of course, this was highly exciting to Callie and Lyra. Callie zoomed up and down the stairs trying to catch the kids as they went tumbling past. As Callie chased the girls, she made a huuuf-huuuf-huuuf sound that sounded a lot like a person trying not to laugh. Lyra just stayed at the bottom of the stairs, barking incessantly. A strand of drool stretched to the floor.

When the girls got tired of stair surfing, they used the boogie boards as shields while play jousting in the basement. When they got tired of that, they just started whacking each other.

“Daa-ad!” someone yelled. “She broke one of your boogie boards!”

I ventured into the melee. Sure enough, one of the boards had snapped into two pieces. Callie was in a sphinx position on the floor, swishing her tail, and looked up at me with an I-didn’t-do-it expression on her face. Lyra, who was chewing on one of the chunks, had taken a bite out of one of the pieces and was about to swallow it when I reached into her mouth and swept it away. I picked up the board and stared at the crescent she had made. It was about the size of Callie’s chin.

A lightbulb went off in my head.

I retrieved a utility knife from the garage and cut the broken boogie board into strips. Carefully, I began carving out a semicircle on the edge of each piece. After each pass, I would check the fit against Callie’s chin. The first piece had a small cutout for the end of her muzzle. The next piece had a bigger cutout, and the next bigger yet. Stacked against each other, the cutouts were beginning to form a three-dimensional cradle. The fourth piece was the biggest. A deep cutout allowed the foam to extend up to Callie’s ears and fit behind the back of her jaw. This provided a secure support both up and down and, crucially, forward and backward.

With the sandwich of four pieces taped together, I checked the fit on Callie. She had retired to the sofa. Gently, I lifted up her head and placed the foam sandwich beneath her chin. She relaxed and looked at me with indifference.

I was ecstatic. I snapped some photos to send to Andrew and Mark. The new chin rest would solve our motion problems. It was firm, so it would support the weight of Callie’s head and prevent movement up and down. But the cutout also provided her with positive feedback on where to place her head. Her chin would fit in only one way, and the cutout guaranteed that as long as Callie nestled her head down into it, the location would be the same left to right and front to back.