Puff the Super Chihuahua

Want to hear a crazy story?

Sexy Nerd and I recently visited Paris and London and I'd been depressed since we returned home from our trip. While we were away, I told everyone we had 4 dogs, but little did I know that wasn’t true. After more than 24 hours of traveling, we arrived home around 2 am, exhausted and ready to collapse.

With it being so late, we were just going to leave the dogs in their room and go straight to bed. Sexy Nerd walked through the foyer and caught a glimpse of something in the backyard. Half asleep, he almost didn’t bother to stop and look. Luckily, he did though. It was a pair of eyes shining in the moonlight.

The eyes belonged to one of our rescue chihuahuas, Phinny. He was cowering beneath a rose bush, trembling and alone. We live in the mountains and often see coyotes around our home. Our neighborhood newsletter constantly updates us on mountain lions, bears, bobcats, and other predators in our yard. Obviously, it is not a safe place for little chihuahuas.

Now awake, we discovered that only our pit bull mixes, Olive and Bernadette, were safely in their room. It took some time to calm Phinny down. How long had he been outside in the dark?

His sister, Puff? She was nowhere to be found.

We probably woke up our neighborhood, calling for Puff at 3 in the morning, searching up and down our rural streets. Our flashlights revealed only darkness. Our cries went out with no one to hear them.

Our pet-sitter had not thought the chihuahuas had gotten out. But if you leave the doors wide open and walk away, doesn’t common sense dictate that is exactly what will happen?

The next day, back at work after almost 2 weeks away, I was sent home. I just couldn’t keep it together. Our little baby Puff, whom we’d cared for since before her eyes were open, might still be out there, terrified.

Could she still be alive? It seemed unlikely. Puff has always had a bad hip and she’s never been able to walk far without stopping to pant, overheated and out of breath.

I read online that if you have something with a scent your dog recognizes, you can use it to help them find their way home. So I set out on foot, dragging a grody pink towel that all 4 dogs had slept on. I walked for many miles. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the temperature was almost 100 degrees.

Dehydrated and crying, my voice hoarse from calling Puff’s name and feeling like a madwoman, I wanted to skip dragging the towel through the cul-de-sacs, but what if that’s where Puff had gone?

I needed to cover as much ground as possible. I sang a song to myself as I walked, “You Will Be Found” from Dear Evan Hansen—but would she be found? There was no sign of her.

Even when the dark comes crashing through
When you need a friend to carry you
And when you’re broken on the ground
You will be found

She was “just a dog,” but she wasn’t. We don’t have kids. We can’t have kids.

For the next week, Sexy Nerd and I searched in vain. Eventually, we accepted that Puff was no longer alive, and we hoped that whatever had gotten her had finished her off quickly and as painlessly as possible. It was impossible to completely let go, though.

We were driving home one night and a fox bolted in front of the car. I knew it was a fox, but I wanted it to be Puff. I wanted to stop the car, go search for the fox in the dark, and call out to it, just in case.

Another week went by. I’d alerted as many people as possible to be on the lookout for Puff. Sometimes people online would message me to ask if a dog they’d seen might be Puff, getting my hopes up only to open a photo that looked nothing like her.

Puff had been such a special, innocent soul. She deserved to be cherished and protected. She did the funniest thing—ask her “Puffers for the win?” and half her mouth would curl into a ferocious (and adorable) snarl. It was like she was smiling but doing it wrong.

During our time fostering her litter for the rescue group, Watermelon Mountain Ranch, anyone who saw the puppies instantly commented on her unique appearance. She’d been rescued from a hoarding situation, but maybe she’d have been better off if Sexy Nerd and I had never taken her in.

Friends asked me if we’d found Puff. Didn’t they understand that we live in the mountains? Of course we had not found Puff. Puff was dead.

After nearly 3 weeks, I was leaving work to head to my favorite restaurant, Scalo, where Sexy Nerd and I had a 6 pm reservation for their monthly wine pairing dinner. I skimmed through my phone and saw an email that filled me with anxiety. It was from a man and it said, “Is this your dog?”

It couldn’t possibly be my dog. Still, I couldn’t help getting my hopes up, even though I knew it was just going to hurt when I saw that it wasn’t Puff. I opened the email.

The photo inside, showing a skinny, wild-eyed mess of matted fur…looked a lot like Puff. It couldn’t be Puff, right?

Puff!

The next moments were a blur. I found myself racing to the house of a complete stranger and driving up their secluded driveway. Their gate closed behind me, preventing me from leaving. As I approached, I thought about how I might be entering a dangerous situation, but I was willing to take the chance if it meant I might be reunited with our little Puff.

Funny enough, it turned out to be the home of my yoga instructor and her husband. It’s a small world indeed!

I searched their yard, but was unable to catch any glimpse of Puff. I was told they’d initially thought the dog was a fox, as they see foxes around their house all the time. It was unnerving. I was so close to finding her, but a hungry fox would love to find her first. My yoga instructor said she would put pieces of salami out to entice Puff to come onto the patio—Puff, as well as every predator nearby.

Quite late to dinner, I called Sexy Nerd from my car to let him know what had happened. It was so absurd to think that a chihuahua could still be alive after 3 weeks in the wilderness, especially one like our Puff. He didn’t believe me. My call was just getting his hopes up, and he knew better than to let that happen. When he saw the photo, though, he agreed.

We wanted to have the courses of our meal boxed to go, ditch our wine pairings, and race back to the mountains to resume our search. What were we going to do, though? Show up and rummage through someone else’s yard in the middle of the night?

During dinner, we shared our story with the couple next to us. One of them showed us photos of coyotes on his phone, their predatory eyes glinting in the dark. “Nothing gets away from them,” he said, and his wife stared at him as if trying to telepathically convey, “What is wrong with you?” It felt like a cruel joke.

We did not find Puff that night. We did not find her the next day or the next night. Just as I’d feared when opening the email, we’d foolishly allowed our hopes to be raised, and now we would need to suffer through the healing process all over again from step zero.

Maybe Puff would have made it if I’d never seen the photo of her, if we hadn’t come looking and calling her name. We’d surely frightened her away from the shelter that had been keeping her alive. The salami had attracted predators she would have otherwise not encountered.

A live trap was set up. My yoga instructor checked it throughout the day and texted an update at 11 pm. The trap was still empty. There were no new texts in the morning. We ate breakfast. We got ready for work.

Just before leaving the house, Sexy Nerd’s phone chimed. Puff! Just like that, our little puppy was returned to our life like nothing had ever happened. Our family was whole again.

The really crazy part?

Puff is fine, really, but she must have had an extremely close call. On one side of her head, the corner of her mouth was ripped open, torn down toward her neck. On the same side, her ear and the back of her skull were covered in bloody scabs.

One of Puff the Super Dog's battle scars, healed

Something had Puff’s head inside its mouth…and she is somehow alive and well. She even tries to run outside each time we open the door, eager to begin a new adventure. Is Puff some sort of super dog? The best explanation I can think of is that a bear saw this fluffy, brown chihuahua and thought, “I will protect this orphaned baby bear.”

Something had tried to take her, but Puff wasn’t ready to go. We’d underestimated her, our quirky little dog. Puff had defied the wilderness and come back to us, battered but alive.

We find ourselves in awe of her resilience. This tiny, fragile creature had faced down a world far bigger and harsher than her and somehow made it through. She has the kind of strength that doesn’t come with size or power, but from a deep, unyielding will to keep going, no matter how impossible it seems.

In her own way, Puff reminds us that even when the world seems most unforgiving, there’s a chance to find your way back. Maybe she’s not a super dog, but I like to think she is.