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The Lost $1,400

In March, we finished up with our last litter of puppies for a while.  We had two litters last summer, and two this past winter.  Not only are our mama dogs tired, but we are too.  By the end of March, I felt like I had never lived without pups in the house--midnight feedings, crate training, socializing.  It's a lot of work.

We charge between $700 and $800 per pup, depending on their colors.  The last litter was from Cherry, and her pups are always $700.  People can pay us however they wish--check, credit card, or cash.  I like it when people pay cash, because the money is used to pay for lessons, or when the girls tell me two minutes before the bus comes that they need $5 for a field trip.  It usually lasts just long enough until we have another litter of pups.

This past litter, two people paid with cash.  This meant $1,400.  We were crazy busy.   It was Easter weekend, and Ethan came home.  The people gave me the money in bank envelopes which I casually left on the counter.

Three weeks later, I was headed to Philadelphia for lessons, and I was looking for the money.  I couldn't find it anywhere, so I called John.  His response was the same as mine:  he didn't have any idea where it was.

As you can probably imagine, I was sick to my stomach.

In the fifteen minutes before I left, I tore apart the house.  I knew the places I would have stashed it, but I honestly couldn't remember stashing it anywhere.  I remembered that it had been sitting on a pile of books on the counter, but that was the last I had seen of it.

John came home and tore apart the house too.

And I started questioning everyone.  Did the kids remember seeing it?  Any chance they picked it up with the books?  I even questioned my cleaning lady, wondering if she had made off with it.

After a couple of days, John told me to stop worrying about it.  It was gone, probably unknowingly thrown away at some point.  I was just sick, but I did what he said.  There was no sense in crying over spilt milk.

The worst part was that it was supposed to be the money we took on our trip to Grand Cayman.  It was going to pay for meals and diving tips and our rental car.  Seeing as we had just paid our taxes, and our mortgage was coming out of the next pay check, we had no liquid money to spare.

You just can't imagine how awful I felt.  The pups are my business, and a way for me to pay for a lot of the extras we do as a family.  It takes a lot of time and effort to raise just two pups, and I had basically done it for free.  I prayed like nobody's business that I would be able to find the money, but nothing showed up.

Until yesterday.

I was making tacos for dinner, and I needed to drain the grease from the beef.  I went to the cupboard above John's "desk" in the kitchen to get a glass to hold the grease.  What did I find?

The envelope, still stuffed with $1,400 worth of $20 bills.

I could hardly believe it.  There it was, just laying in full view, on top of the coffee mugs.


I couldn't speak, but I brought the girls over to the cupboard to see what I saw.  Their first reaction?

"It was DADDY!"

Yes sirree.  He denys it to this day, but all of us know that there's no way we would even THINK to put it there.  John, on the other hand, is a stuffer.  He stuffs the most random stuff in the most random places.  And knowing him, he didn't like that it was sitting out (because we had a lot of people over that weekend), so he just took it from his desk and opened the cupboard directly above and put it in.

All John could say for himself last night was that he was glad that he didn't make me feel guilty about losing it, seeing as I wasn't the one who lost it at all!  You better believe I'm going to tease him about this for a very l-o-n-g time!

It's nice to know, as I prepare to take the girls to Philly today, that I can pay with cash :-)

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