Dan's Papers - March 13, 2009 - King of the Hamptons

It was 7 p.m. in early March and outside our home on Three Mile Harbor Road in one of the most vicious winter storms we have had in a decade. Winds were howling. The snow was sideways.

Moo is our dog. He goes in and out through a dog door on the wall by the refrigerator whenever the whim strikes him.

"I haven't seen him in a while," Chris said.

Could he have gone outside? It was impossible outside.

"We have to find him," I said. And so we went out and trudged through the snow around the house.

"Try in the bathrooms," I said.

No Moo there either. Indeed he wasn't anywhere. We opened the kitchen slider a crack.

The wind burst in. We shut the door. No Moo. I thought the worst.

"When did you last see him?" I asked.

"Oh, two hours ago."

"If you set out his dinner," I said. "I'll look under beds and in closets."

But he was not there. From the master bedroom upstairs, I could hear Chris in the kitchen banging on Moo's metal bowl with a spoon. That would get him.

How could he be so stupid? He was clearly not in the house. He could not have run off. The yard is fenced in. Could he have run off? It was dinnertime. He would not run off. But he had to be out there.

Moo is a Wheaten Terrier. He is about 50 pounds and very furry, like a sheepdog. He goes out a lot, but in this? Maybe he got under the house for shelter. But I thought about it. There was no way.

"I have to go out there," I said. My voice quivered.

We had been watching the news. "With the wind chill, it's 10 below," Chris said.

"I don't care." He would be frozen stiff, is what I thought. I hate finding animals like that.

Poor Moo, so friendly and floppy. Just pet him once on the top of his head and he falls down on his side in joy. Then he is on his back, feet up, purring softly, looking for a tummy rub. And now he's gone.

As I was getting my coat and scarf, however, I thought of one place we had not looked.

"I'll bet he's on the roof," I said to Chris.

"Impossible, in this weather," she said.

When Chris and I go to bed late at night upstairs, there is a spot that we all enjoy.

It is probably the most exposed place at our house, with the widest view of the harbor in front of our house and the hillside behind. It is a rooftop, a flat place outside our bedroom that we have adorned with two heavy chaise lounges with padded seats side by side. On summer nights, it is a wonderful place to go - there is a door leading to it from this bedroom - to watch the moon and the stars. There is also a staircase outside that goes up to it from the hillside.

I went up to the bedroom and over to the glass door that goes out to the rooftop. And there he was, sitting on one of the chaises, his head into the wind, enjoying the evening. This dog is mad, I thought. On the other hand, I thought he looked rather regal, sort of like one of the stone lions on the steps of the New York Public Library.

I opened the door a crack. He couldn't hear it, of course, in that wind.

I called to him at the top of my voice. "Moo!" It brought him up short, and he turned his snow speckled head, inquisitively.

Reluctantly, he hopped down and trotted over. If I wanted him to come in I'd have to open the door a little farther. I did so.

"I GOT HIM!" I shouted.

Inside, he snorted once and ran in front of me through the bedroom and down the hall. His fur sparkled with snow.

There was dog food for him in the kitchen downstairs, and so I followed him, encouraging him along the way. He barreled down the stairs and through the living room, Chris encouraging him into the kitchen by announcing dinner was ready, and I got there after him and just in time to see him go right by her and out the dog door back into the storm.

Chris stood there. She was holding a spoon.

"He's never done that before," she said.

"Well," I said. There wasn't much else to say.

You can't see the chaise lounges from the kitchen slider, but if Moo sits on one of the lounges holding his head high, you can see it poking up just under the lowest rung of the railing.

He was there for the next three hours, until through the storm you could hear what sounded like thunder coming through some crazy part of this remarkable storm.