A Lost Cowboy

Wednesday was like any other day for us. The Nurse and I were to leave for dog training and alas we were running late because of me. If you know us, you know I'm perpetually late for everything I do.  If you know The Nurse, you know she's on time for everything we do. So, once The Nurse wrangled me, the dog, herself, and all of our essentials into the car, we think we're on our way.  But as we're driving along, I looked to the left, and there lying in the middle of the road, on the yellow line, was a Woody doll.

I'm not sure why I stopped, other than the fact that Woody made eye contact with me, and when he did it was straight up 1995 again, and all I could remember was being Woody's "favorite deputy" many years ago. When that cowboy looked up at me, I immediately knew I had to turn around to "rescue" him.  Now, at this point, I still hadn't told The Nurse why we were turning around, just that there was something I needed to "save" in the middle of the road.  (She's used to this because I'm constantly breaking for animals, so she was probably relieved it was just a plastic doll....) After scooping him up from certain death via a minivan, The Nurse and I had a good laugh about him and continued on.

After class that night, I thought I would create a simple Facebook post about the doll, just in an attempt to locate's his owner.  In my mind, there was a small child out there who was (and still is) missing his best-friend, and I thought social media would be the best place to find this person.  I had no idea so many people would be touched by Woody and his plea to get home, but if you've seen us this week, you know the post went viral.  As of this moment, our Woody story has been picked up by 3 news channels (Ohio, Texas and Georgia), our local radio station (K99.1 FM), and has been viewed over 286,000 times.

Perhaps it was the simplicity and nostalgia of the post.
Perhaps is was the fact there are a lot of evils in the world right now.
Perhaps it's just that it's nice to see the underdog come out on top.

I don't know.

But, I can say is I'm grateful to all of you who've found us, who have showered us with love this week, and who have shared Woody's post in order to help bring him home.  He isn't there yet, but if you have seen him on Facebook, you can tell he's certainly trying!  :)