The My Buddy Butch Chronicle - NY Times Best Selling Author Ben Huh"I Has A Hot Dog!"

My Dad is 86 years old he is doing remarkably well for someone that age. It's no surprise that he has hearing aids and has a difficult time hearing without them which leads me to tell you to make sure you always have identification for your pet. Either an updated ID chip or at very least a collar with ID tags. What??? How did I connect these two things that have absolutely NOTHING to do with each other? It makes perfect sense to me after today's fiasco during a thunderstorm.

Now that I have completely lost you, let me start at the point where a thunderstorm is rolling in and I call my Dad, which is where Butch is staying for the day, to check to see if he knows a bad storm is heading in. There is a slight chance that when I call and he answers the phone that the battery in his hearing aid is dead. He doesn't know it because he dosed off with the 3 stooges Butch, Bosco, and Buttons all on top of him snoring on the recliner, when the phone woke him up. The conversation goes something like this...

Dad- "Hello?"

Jeff - "Hi Dad I just called to ..."

Dad - "Hello?"

Jeff (louder) - "Hey - It's Me I wanted.."

Dad - "Hello?"

Jeff (louder) - "Hey - Don't Hang..." (click) - Dial Tone.

Ok You get it, but here is the rub. As I raise my voice over the phone so my Dad can hear me over the dead battery hearing aid he has in his hear which is now a solid piece of plastic preventing any sound at all from entering, Butch, sitting on his lap hears my voice in the distance, yelling over the phone and goes running outside...no collar on, looking for me thinking that I have pulled into the driveway. As the storm is now rolling in a huge lightning and thunder crash occurs just as Butch is running out the door. Terrified of storms and looking for me at that exact moment, Butch decides to take off out of the front yard and bolts, in a strange neighborhood, in a driving rain storm trying to find me. I know this because when it does storm he is never more than one inch away from me. Dad calls me at the office, frantic, "Butch is Gone! He ran out the door and he is in the storm." I go tearing out of my office. By the time I get to the house, Dad, almost in tears is devastated. At this point school kids are just getting out of school. My nephew Alex gathers a few of his friends and long story - short 2-1/2 hours later the principal for the grade school a couple of blocks away is walking up the street holding Butch, one of the boys says "Hey Mr. Smith that's Butch, he ran away in the storm!"

This could have ended so tragically I can't even begin to think about it. What makes it worse is how bad my Dad felt. Dad knows dogs better than I probably ever will, but this freak series of events can happen to anyone. To be fair to Dad, a similar situation also happened to me, one fourth of July a few years ago and I wrote about it in "My Buddy Butch - Confessions of a New Dog Dad." When Butch is with me he is never more than ten feet away except when I am mowing. My point here is that enough people and thank God, kids on bicycles, now know who Butch is and we were able to find him. He is safe and sound wearing his "Thundershirt" comfortably laying under my desk as I write this during another storm. (He would normally be hiding behind a toilet. Phil Blizzard was right, it works!) I am lucky enough to be able to say that I can correct this but there are many people out there that wish they would have tagged their pet or microchipped their pet or kept the records updated. Please don't be one of these people like I almost was today and make sure your dog wears a collar with ID tags and if it has a chip keep the records updated!