About a year and a half ago, Sarah took her beloved "white puppy" to kindergarten for show and tell. He is a small little stuffed dog that can be attached to a zipper on a coat or backpack. She loves that dog, and talks about it like he is real. She put him in her jacket pocket during recess and when it was time to come inside, she realized that he had fallen out. She looked for him after school, she looked the next day, she asked the groundskeeper if he had seen it. She asked all the other kids in her kindergarten, she asked her teacher, she even had the whole family go up to school the next weekend and search everywhere for it. We never found him.
She cried and cried and couldn't get to sleep some nights with worry about him being cold, or rained on, or scared of the dark. I did my best to comfort her, and say that probably some other kid found him and was taking good care of him, but it didn't really make her feel better. That was her dog, and she wanted to be the one to take care of him. We said several prayers asking Heavenly Father to keep him safe, and that was about the only thing that would help her calm down enough to get to sleep some nights. She finally stopped mentioning him every single night, but only after several months, and even then, at least once a week she would say, "I really miss white puppy."
I understood her sadness and attachment to the toy. After all, more than 30 years later I still remember my orange ball that got casually tossed out the window of our car as it sped down the highway by my baby brother. How I cried for that ball. I would look for it every time we drove down that road for years afterward, and would sometimes wake up at night filled with sadness that it was gone. So Sarah's behavior didn't seem outrageous to me at all, but it did make me feel so sad that she had to experience the same thing I did.
Well, 3 weeks ago Sarah came home from school really excited. She said that she thought she had seen white puppy. Desiree had a dog that looked just like him hanging on her backpack. I asked Sarah if she had asked her friend where she got the puppy. Sarah said no, so I told her to ask Desiree to find out. And at first, Desiree said she had bought it, but when Sarah told her how she had lost a puppy that looked just like that, Desiree admitted to finding it on the kindergarten playground. Desiree didn't hear Sarah ask about it at the time, because she was actually in the other kindergarten class, and Sarah only asked the kids in her class.
I am sure Desiree had grown attached to white puppy as well, because it took her a couple of days to take it off her backpack and give it back to Sarah after knowing it was hers. But still, in the end, she gave it back and Sarah is one happy little girl. The even more amazing part of this story is this…When Nicholas heard that Sarah had found white puppy he gave out the loudest shriek of happiness I have ever heard. He said, "I have been praying every night that you would find him again!" So of course, I had to have the kids say a prayer of thankfulness right there. How sweet is that, that Nicholas would pray so much for his sister's lost toy? And how glad I am that their faith was rewarded in such a positive way. We all sleep happier now that white puppy is back home again where he belongs.
