This is Vienna. She's a black/brown mini-dachschund who has been with the family for more than 7 years. We saw her grow up from a puppy to a cheerful dog. We allowed her to freely roam the house, hunting down the mice to her heart's content. She's intelligent in a unique way, and she would do almost the most outrageous things to get our attention. It seemed she envied the attention we gave the cats in the house to the point that she would even climb the chairs and table the way cats do, to our grave surprise when she would suddenly lick our lips during meals. She's the only dog I know who enjoys eating cat food. She's the only dog I know who doesn't bark at strangers but instead invites them to play with her. She likes being tickled on her belly, but be careful not to do it too much, because she tends to pee when she's at the point of ecstasy. She likes her face to be mashed up in your hands and doesn't mind a bit, as long as she can still breath. On one of her pregnancies, she suffered an hernia, where she needed to be operated on. The doctor said not to excite her so much so she wouldn't move too much to hasten her healing. But I guess with Vienna, that's impossible.
I guess we trained her to be too friendly and accommodating. One morning, she got out of our house without our knowledge (the garden and garage were being renovated) and when we discovered she was gone, she was nowhere to be found. Neighbors last saw her playing with a man. Our suspicion was that she has been taken away by this person. It could be anyone. Who could resist not owning such a friendly pet? Now, what I couldn't fathom is how people could simply grab a dog from a street without thinking that there could be a family looking for this dog. They could have asked around first, a little concern. This is basically kidnapping. We have lost a family member, and our family is grieving. We just pray that whoever took Vienna to please kindly return her to us… and if ever in your cold heart, you wouldn't do so, at least take care of her more than we cared for her.
