Mandy and the Fox

She's been so good most of the time, and then... I took her out to the side yard near midnight, for her pre-bedtime relief break. On this rare occasion, I didn't have any shoes on, and was shifting my weight from one sore foot to the other on the cold hard concrete, while admiring our neighbor's Christmas tree, and waiting for her. Then I heard a quiet little "rrr" and the rapid patter of little feet, and looked over to see her disappearing across the street, between our neighbors' houses. I could only presume that she'd seen a fox on a yard over there, and that the fox was leading her into the shadows behind the houses. I nervously watched for a few seconds, and sure enough, out from the other side of the house came a fox at full run, big fluffy tail floating in the breeze, with Mandy a few feet behind. I called for her to stop and come back, but of course she was pretty well fixated. They flew across the street, and disappeared into the space on the other side of our house. I guessed they were heading down the hill toward the fox's den under the juniper bushes. I went into the house and put on my boots, then went out on the deck with a flashlight, hoping I could see or hear them down there. I heard a jingle that I thought was Mandy's collar tags, and whistled and called for her to come home. No response. I ran down the stairs and went out on the patio to see if I could see her. Nothing. I realized the neighbor's dogs were out, and the jingle was probably them. I was losing hope every second, that she'd survived her midnight encounter with this fox. Then I thought hopefully that maybe the jingle *was* her, coming back up the hill, and went back upstairs and out the side door where we'd been, to see if she had returned there. Nope. I wandered around to the front of the house, and right then, here comes Mandy, trotting proudly back from around the front of the house and up the driveway in the dark. At first I thought she was limping, but then I realized she was having a hard time walking, because she was so busy strutting her stuff. She's such a lucky, lucky, lucky, dog.