Appropriately named Tallulah Blankhead, ran away from home yesterday. Tallulah is a Cockapoo with an intellect rivaled only by garden tools. Babe has spoiled her rotten. She is obsessively attached to him because he feeds her under the table when he thinks I'm not looking.

In the ten years she has lived with us, she has never once left the back yard by herself. Why? Because she is joined at the hip with her bed, her food bowl, and her favorite toy, pale green stuffed rabbit whose name is Mr. Bill.

We trained her to use the doggie door for those times when she needed to take a break. For a dog whose last name is Blankhead, she caught on rather quickly. She would go outside, do her business, then return to her digs within a reasonable length of time.

That, however, was before yesterday.

It was still daylight when Babe left for his poker game which is our weekly grocery supplement if and when he wins. I was banging around in the kitchen but I still heard Tallulah when she went out the doggie door and only half-listened for the familiar flap-flap sound of her return. After a while, when I still didn't hear it, I began to worry that she might have been dognapped. She is, after all, cute in a cockeyed sort of way.

I walked out to the deck thinking perhaps she had wandered onto the golf course and got herself boinked in the head by an errant Titleist. I saw nothing out there. Not even a range ball.

Twenty minutes later I was wringing my hands in ernest. Babe would not hesitate to turn me in to the SPCA as an unfit dog mama if anything was to happen to his neurotic dog. I am quite sure of this.

If Tallulah had not always been such a lily-livered pooch quietly hovering alongside her keepers, I wouldn't have been that concerned. Always a people dog, she is happiest when we are all at home together. Long ago I realized she would never die contented until she caused me to trip and break my fool neck over her low-lying, quietly sidling body.

Where could she be? I called out to her over and over with no better results than any of my previous efforts. I began to sweat the small stuff.

Then I stopped hollering like a mountain mama in order to listen, and that's when I finally heard her incomparable Cockapoo bark. It sounded as if she were miles from her digs.

Convinced that some evil person had done the dastardly deed of stealing Tallulah Blankhead, I shifted into high gear. If I had owned a gun, if I had ever even thought of owning a gun, I would have sprinted like an Olympic champion into the house. I would have loaded that sucker up with as many bullets as I could find.

The truth is, I am a chicken. Tallulah, bless her stupid heart, was not born with a lily liver; she got it by osmosis ‹ from me! I hate guns, so instead of pulling a handy AK-47 out of my closet, I settled for my car keys and hit the road. I was determined to rescue Babe's precious dog, even if she is dumber than a box of hair.

Not two blocks away, I spied her. She was snarling at a fire hydrant that some clever Southern patriot had painted gray and white to resemble a corpulent Confederate soldier. She had barked herself into a war whoop.

I tried to drown her out. "Tallulah Blankhead!"

She tore her eyes away from Robert E. Lee long enough to glance in my direction, puff up her chest and once more tear into General Lee as if he were drenched in Eau de Alpo.

I looked all around, but saw nothing that would indicate a dognapping in progress. So, armed with an attitude of "Hush up, dawg, before I give you something to bark about," I jumped out of the car, yanked her up by the collar and dragged her fat little fanny back to the car. She had the good grace to hang her head and look sheepish.

It was not until we got home that I figured out what caused her to stray from her obsessively natural habitat ‹ why Babe's Cowardly Cockapoo chose to leave the familiarity of home and hearth only to get waylaid by a fire hydrant dressed to kill in Rebel Grey.

She had run away from home.

Deserted her post.

Tallulah Blankhead went AWOL.

It puzzled me. Why would a dog, who for ten years had successfully ruled an entire household, suddenly take a powder? Were the recently introduced meals designed for over the hill, over-indulged, overweight canines, not quite up to her epicurean taste buds?

The answer, of course, was right there in front of me all the time.

Miz Sophie, a very lucky stray white kitten I had rescued from the clutches of the Grim Reaper, was the obvious culprit. In only two weeks she had managed to launch a coup d'état to rival anything ever cooked up in a Banana Republic.

Armed with outrageously large blue eyes and saber sharp teeth and nails, she came, she saw, she conquered. Overnight, Miz Sophie took over the throne and became the new Queen.

Not unlike General Lee, Tallulah Blankhead has since decided that she is not yet ready to surrender. Apparently, she discovered a new source of strength and resolve while snarling at a fat fire hydrant guarding the corner.

On that night, that very corner became Tallulah Blankhead's Fort Sumter. I believe that she is preparing to defend her position and is hoping that it will be Miz Sophie's Appomattox.

Me? I'm praying that their battle for dominion, their war between the inner states, won't end up being my personal Waterloo.

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