True Story…

 

Everyone knows I’m a dog kook.

I walked out to get in the van to go to work the other day and a Cocker Spaniel and a Bulldog ran up to me.  The Spaniel was freshly groomed but didn’t have a collar.  The Bulldog had on a collar but it didn’t have a tag.  They were obviously together and obviously someone’s dogs. 

Our street is a cul-de-sac with about 15 houses on it.  I used to know everyone but we’ve had new neighbors move into a couple of houses in the last year.  I thought maybe they belonged to them.  I walked the street with the dogs in tow.  No gates were open and no one answered when I rang the doorbells.

I went back to the house and the dogs lost interest in me.  They moved on up the street and I was going to let them go and was feeling super guilty about it.  I get in the van and start up the street.  About this time a pregnant lady with a baby in the car stops to put the dogs in the back of her minivan.  I thought she was the owner so I stopped to help her.  Turns out she saw them and just wanted to take them to her house to keep them safe.  She didn’t have room in the back of her van because of the stroller and doesn’t want to put them inside the van with her baby.  Great.  Can’t blame her, but great.  So, I roll down the windows in my van and back down my street calling the dogs the whole time.  They followed me down there and I put them in the backyard.

We have a neighborhood app and message board so I called my neighbor Leanne to see if she would put it on there since I was driving and already late.  I also called Craig to have him look to see if he could find anything and he did too.  I had my worker bees on it and the doggies were safe and sound in our backyard.  Mission partly accomplished.

It was now time to call Tommy.  The dreaded phone call.  I started the convo off by saying I knew he was going to kill me but… He took it like a champ and just sighed.  I could tell he was plenty pissed but he didn’t say anything except that I could not keep the dogs.  He said he didn’t want to own 4 dogs!  (Like I did!)  I promised him that they were someone’s dogs and that they would be gone by the end of the day.  He just sighed some more.

I checked throughout the day and no one had claimed the dogs and no one had called me.  When I got home I made some signs and put them up at the mailboxes in our section and one at the main entrance.  Nothing!  I started to get worried.  I knew that I could take them to the vet to see if they were micro-chipped but I really thought someone would notice that these expensive dogs were missing!!!  

This is where Karma bit me in the butt. 

I couldn’t let Scooby and Mae out in the backyard so I had to put the leash on them and take them to the front yard.  I was standing there with Scooby when he gets tangled up in the garbage can at the curb.  I went one way and he went the other.  Next thing I know, his collar slips over his head and he’s running up the street.  I know better than to try to chase after him on foot because the dude is super fast.  I grabbed the keys to my work van and took off after him.  I was seriously in tears at this point.

After driving the neighborhood while crying for 30 minutes in the rain, I gave up and headed back to the house.  I had left the garage door up and there he was.  He was standing at the backdoor ready to go inside.  I couldn’t tell you how thrilled I was to have my faith in the universe restored.  Saving someone else’s dogs only to lose one of mine just didn’t seem fair!

Thankfully, while I was laying down with Erin the owner called.  He had gotten home late and found that the dogs were gone.  The FedEx guy had put a package in his backyard and left the gate open and the dogs got out.  Tommy helped him load the dogs and he was very thankful and appreciative that I had kept them safe.  He told Tommy he couldn’t believe they let me get close to them and that he was a Mustang buff and that the dogs were named Shelby and Rausch.  He said the Bulldog barks and won’t get close to people and the Cocker Spaniel runs.  I told Tommy they were both on me like white on rice and I didn’t have the least bit of trouble coaxing them into the backyard.

The man also told Tommy that the Bulldog was worth about $2,000!  Crazy.  I would have at least had a tag on a dog worth two grand.  The little Cocker was a chocolate female so I’m betting she was worth $700 or $800 hundred.  All in all, they were expensive well taken care of dogs that were running in front of cars and cruising the hood.

I feel good about helping them and will probably do it again with the next stray I find.  The one thing I ask is that next time I save dogs I hope it’s on a nice sunny day.  The two times I’ve done this it’s been raining and I’ve gotten soaked.