Meet Otter, the world’s cutest puppy. She’s my niece’s four-month-old chihuahua puppy. I’m not quite sure how we ended up with Otter — when The Girl asked for her I told her most confidently that my husband would not allow any more pets. Besides, after fostering a pit bull mix, I was enjoying my puppyless state. But, here she is and damn cute too. The cool thing about chihuahuas is that it’s like having a whole host of animals you wouldn’t otherwise have in your house. She looks like a rat. She has a funny way of prancing around like a little pony. And she has this weird little move where she rears up on her back legs and then POUNCES, just like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park.

My niece was less than seven hours into a trip to California to visit her family when I got a phone call from my daughter.

“Nanny let Loki and Otter outside and Loki took Otter off somewhere and left her. Loki’s back in the house but Nanny can’t find Otter.” (Loki is our erstwhile Yorkiepoo.)

I made it home in record time. No way was I calling my niece and telling her that sometime between her plane taking off from Atlanta and her landing in California, we had already lost her dog. I was envisioning the many things that can happen to a tiny chi puppy. She could have fallen in our creek or got tangled in some vines in the woods. She could have been carried off by a hawk or mauled by a bigger dog. Or even a bigger cat. We have some pretty vicious chipmunks that live in the sewer at the front of our subdivision. The front of the subdivision…what if she made it out to the road?

I was driving down our street when I saw two forlorn little figures walking along the curb. My daughter and Nanny…no Otter. I felt sick. I told The Girl to go make a sign to put up by the road and sent them both into the house while I did a quick lap around the neighborhood to see if she was playing in anyone’s yard. I only got about halfway around when my phone rang for the second time. It was my daughter.

“So yeah, we found Otter.”

I felt a little faint. “Oh my God! Where was she?”

“In the house.”

Otter was most pleased with herself when I got home. There was much prancing and pouncing and treats to be had. Then it occurred to me that I had put her in an upstairs bathroom when I left for work that morning. I looked at Nanny suspiciously.

“So tell me…how did Otter get out of the bathroom?”

She looked only slightly guilty. “I let her out.”

That means Nanny climbed up the stairs, the stairs which no nanny should be climbing. “I TOLD you not to climb the stairs! Besides, I put her in the bathroom for a reason.”

She pats my hand. “I know, dear. And I let her out for a reason.”