Lost and Found Dog

I had the weirdest experience today. I was out walking my two doggies around 10:30 pm when hubs and I passed a house about a few blocks away from our home with a somewhat elderly looking woman and an even older looking woman standing out on our driveway looking bewildered. Well to be honest, the truly ancient looking lady was actually seated in the garage clipping her nails, but you get the picture. We surmised that it was a mother and daughter.

The daughter yelled out to us, "Excuse me!?"

and being the polite Southern-ish girl that I am, I responded, "Yes, ma'am?"

"I was wondering if either of you have seen a lost dog," she replied.

Now here's the bizarre thing- hubs and I rarely take that route home on our walks. Usually we turn the west on the block to the south of that street, completely bypassing this house. The truly strange coincidence in all of this is that yesterday I got an email from our HOA president entitled "Found Dog" stating that one of my neighbors had picked up a pooch without a collar while out riding bikes with his kids. There was no identifying info about the dog, but I told the woman about the email  and made a mental note of her description of the animal. Luis took down her phone number and we memorized the address (2933 W...) and I told her I'd pass her info along to whomever had found the dog. I didn't have the address or phone of the folks who and found the animal off hand because I don't know them and at that point knew nothing of any lost or found dogs in the area, and neither of the two women appeared to be capable of maneuvering the email machine so I couldn't just forward the message with the info on to them.

We were nearly home at this point, so I just went straight to the office when we got back to check the email which I normally would have deleted, but for some reason or other had not. There were attached pictures which I hadn't noticed before, which I now opened. Low and behold the dog photographed matched exactly the description given to me by the younger woman. I immediately called her, since Luis had saved the number and we knew she would be awake still, and told her the good news.

She took down the family's information.

Then,  clearly choking back tears she explained that the dog belonged to her mother who was very ill and whom had to spend most of the day confined to a hospital bed. She said that they were so worried about the little doggie because the pooch's companionship cheered her infirm mother greatly and gave her motivation to get up and move around the little bit that she was capable of. She told me that she had spent the last 3 days looking for the dog, but the local animal shelters had all been closed on the 3rd for the holiday celebration, and the 4th because it was a Sunday. She said yesterday she'd been told the dog was picked up by a shelter about 20 minutes away and she drove out only to find out it was the wrong dog. She said they'd been praying for a miracle. She asked a neighbor to send out an email to all their neighbors offering a reward for the dog's safe return. 

Here's the thing: The house in question, although only about 3 blocks away from my house, is not in my subdivision, so none of her neighbors would have gotten the email about the found dog. None of my neighbors would have gotten the email about the lost dog, because there is little to no communication between the two developments. We rarely walk down that road, and the few times we have, I've never seen those two outside, nor spoken to them. I'm sure they only stopped us out of desperation because we were walking around with a toy poodle and the lost dog was also a toy poodle. This animal is clearly an important and cherished part of their family, and I am sure that tonight the hubs and I were part of something big. We did nothing extraordinary, but through small ordinary means, the Lord was able to put us in exactly the right place at the right time in order to facilitate something that for those two women is clearly nothing short of a miracle.

I am very grateful to have been a link in that chain, because it strengthened my testimony that our Lord is aware of all us and that he cares about things that are seemingly insignificant in the grander scheme but make a world of difference to us as individuals,

like lost and found dogs.