My goodness, you both have quite some stories about your dogs! When I lived in the country we had a cat that was very loving. One day he turned up missing and we thought maybe he had been run over on the road (55 MPH), or something like that. We just couldn't find him. Then about a year later he reappeared. He was drooling, so I took him to the vet. After his examination, the vet said what caused it was a hole that went clear through his tongue, in the top and out the bottom of it. We could only wonder how it had happened to him. He escaped something, and he loved us enough to get back home.