My little man is missing.  He’s been gone about 4 hours now and I am one sniffle away from bawling my eyes out!  We have been looking for hours, and it finally got too dark to keep chasing after him.  We lost him in some woods about 2 miles from the homestead.  I have NO idea how he got loose, there is no obvious fence break anywhere and the sheep are all safe.  The neighbors came down and we walked the fence 3 times and only found this one area that he MIGHT have gotten through, if he was spooked or something, but it’s so weird.

I was down at the neighbors, at the barn sale for a few hours.  My girls are in Chicago this weekend with their Dad.  I left Cody and the sheep in the middle yard where it’s nice and safe.  I left their house and went to town to get milk and butter and came back home.  This was about 5:30 or so…  saw all the sheep and just assumed Cody was grazing behind the garage or something, went in and got dinner going.  Ate, and thought I would go and put everyone away in their barns so I could watch a DVD and I’m walking around and I’m thinking, that’s weird… where is Cody?  I checked his barn, nothing.  I checked the poultry barn… nothing.  I started calling, nothing.  I went into the back pasture and checked the big barn and all over, nothing.

And then I got this sick knot in my gut.  I wondered immediately, was he stolen.  I had Domingo on Craigslist for a day, but I had a lot of people email and many knew our farm and some even thought it was Cody that we were rehoming.  Out here, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can just ask anyone cuz they will know all your business.  It’s amazing how much everyone knows what is going on.  I just paniced… what if someone came and stole him?

I called the sheriff right away. They are super super nice out here and since it’s hardly crime capital of the world, something like this is better than nothing.  Heck, they all own livestock as well, so they know how upsetting it is to loose someone!  They took the information and all and then I called my friends down the road.  Of course, being the super fantastic people they are, they came right down and we started searching.

Well, Jr. caught a glimpse of him way down the farm access lane to the east of us and the boys went off to help him.  Cody came over to him, but he didn’t have a halter on…  I had just taken it off him this morning because it was rubbing a sore spot behind his ears!!!!    (Good fitting pony halters are HARD to find!)  We drove back there and then I went out calling for him, as we all did.  He crossed over the mile away country road and was running, spooked.  He hit this little bit of woods and we lost him.

We drove all over, talking to neighbors, giving out my number, but finally it got too dark.

Once home, I called the sheriff back to let them know that we HAD seen him and he was not stolen, but loose.  They wanted me to talk to the next country to the north, which is Michigan, and patched me through.  They were super nice as well and gave me the numbers of the local radio station as well as the Hillsdale Livestock Auction, which is tomorrow!!!  In this economy, you never know, someone could turn a fast buck selling a nice pony like Cody.  The radio guy was amazingly nice and said he’d immediately get the word out and they would for 5 days or until he was found.  And I left the information with the auction folks.  I will call them again in the morning to make sure they got the message.

And I’ll be out bright and early in the morning to keep driving around and searching for him, I am so worried about him!  He is my big sweetie grumpy old man!!!!  I just can’t believe the string of luck we’ve had the last couple weeks with animal issues….  shesh….

Please think good thoughts for him?  My Cody boy needs to be home.  I am just so heartbroken…  first the sheep last year and now Cody!!!  Honest, this is just awful!  It’s going to be so hard to sleep….