Gathering of the Figments

fbi_woman · Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 9:20 am Post subject: Baxter

An amazing story showed up in my copy of the In Gate magazine today (the magazine for the ontario A circuit of horse shows) and I wanted to share it with everyone since the magazine can't be purchased. The article is written by Candice Delia, but I'm going to summarize it.

On our horse show circuit, we basically live at the shows. The horses are stabled there, and many people sleep on site in campers. Because we're at shows more often than we're home, coaches always bring their dogs and most of them are free to roam the horse show ground without a leash, it's just common practise for the shows. Everyone knows what each coach's dog looks like, and they know to stay out of the way of the horses.

In the winter, a good portion of our circuit goes down to florida to show. This is where the story of Baxter begins. The Delias run one of the bigger stables on the circuit in Ontario, and they're no strangers to horse show life. They brought their dog Baxter with them to the show like usual, not having a clue of what would happen to him. One day, Candice went to lunge a horse, and Baxter followed her, but when she had finished, she noticed he was gone. He knew how to find the stable, so she assumed he had gone back to their stalls, but he was not there. They looked for him all night when he didn't turn up, and continued their search the next day. They posted flyers all over the horse show and offered a generous reward, called all of the pounds in Wellington, and searched high and low, but no Baxter.

Eventually their time in florida came to an end, and they had to return home to Canada. They still had not found Baxter, and had to leave him behind, with hopes that someone would contact them. When they got back, Candice registered on the site Fido Finder, and posted a missing ad for Baxter. From time to time she got e-mails about dogs matching his description that were found, but none of them were Baxter. She was about to cancel her account and give up, defeated and disappointed, when she got one more e-mail. She decided she would look into this last e-mail before she gave up. It was from a woman in Arizona who had adopted a dog from her local pound. The people at the pound said he was a stray, and they took him in. He was sick with kennel cough, extremely underweight, and had two bad knees. They didn't think anyone would want him like that, and they were set to put him down the day after the woman arrived to take him home.

The woman decided that she should post on Fido Finder to see if someone had lost the dog, because she knew she would have wanted to know if someone found her dog. After numerous e-mails and exchange of pictures, Candice had found her Baxter, 5 1/2 months after he had gone missing. Baxter was flown back to Canada and is now home with the Delias.

So let this be a message to everyone; if you find a pet or adopt a pet that was found as a stray, please put their information out there in case they already have a loving home that's missing them desperately, like Baxter and the Delias.
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...:::Life is a balance of holding on and letting go:::...

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