Stories from the Amazon - Lost Dog

The first year of owning my first horse Nathaniel and getting my Great Dane, Mandy, was a year of learning a lot. Lots about horses, life, adventures and exploration. Mandy was a half grown pup at the time of this story. Every day I'd ride the horse, groom, clean, feed and enjoy the adventures of horse ownership as a teenager. Our mission base was located right by the Madeira River, a tributary of the Amazon. There was a road that went alongside the river which went all the way from the town to another small river community lots of kilometers down river. I had up to that point mostly only been on that road in the direction of town. So now that I had my own transportaion my curiosity about other locations was arroused and I frequently went exploring on roads and trails that few of the adults ever knew about. One fine day I decided to turn right and ride the road down river from the base. Few cars passes us and we were enjoying the scenery. We came upon an interesting trail which beckoned my sense of adventure. The trees were tall and different looking. They had big tall roots that created walls alongside the tree base and there were frogs and lizards, mushrooms and neat looking plants growing in all the crevices of the root walls. We rode down the trail slowly, looking at the trees and enjoying the scenery. Suddenly we came upon a small little creek with and island. Of course my curiosity got the best of me so I dismounted, tied the horse up and the dog and I crossed the creek to the island to explore that. I found more of the trees with root walls and marshy soil. Mandy kept sniffing around as well, very interested in all the smells of the swampy creek. Finally I decided it was time to head home so I crossed back over the creek and got on the horse. I thought Mandy had followed me back. On the way home I came back a different way, through the field of tall grass instead of on the road. And when I say tall grass, this stuff was belly high on a horse. If you tried to walk through it not on the horse you very well might get lost. I thought Mandy was following like she usually did in the trail the horse made with his hooves. We went a fairly long distance, maybe a kilometer or two, through the tall grass till we got back to the road. The grass finally released us back to the road, but to my dismay, Mandy wasn't with me, nor did she come bounding out of the grass on her own. She was nowhere to be found. I called and called and no dog showed up. By that time it was almost dark and I decided that it would be better to put the horse in his spot for the night. In the Amazon the sun sets at 6 and rises at 6 and it's quite dark and hard to care for the horse in that kind of dark. After getting him set for the night and continuing to call for Mandy and hope that she would be a good dog and find her own way home, my family went with me in the car to look for her and call her. We still found no sign of her. I was just heartbroken thinking my dog was gone forever. There were some other short term missionaries on the base and they had a very loud, howling basset hound so we went to see if their dog would track down Mandy. However at that time I didn't realize that he probably needed to be trained for tracking in order to actually do any good at finding her. That whole night I worried about where she was. The next morning bright and early I gathered my dad and brothers up to help me go look for her again. We all split up in groups and went to the trail with the cool trees and the tall grass that I had ridden though. After several hours of looking and calling finally my dad and brother found her back on the island waiting patiently for someone to find her. She must have gone back to where she last had been with me since she got lost from me and didn't know apparently how to get home. I was so relieved when they drove back home with her. Needless to say she never lost me again!