Caring for your Pets »
On Friday night, we found a puppy down the street on our way home from Vacation Bible School. Being the saps we are, we promptly stopped and talked to her. As it turned out, she's not a puppy at all, at least in the sense of being young. While I don't know her exact age, she is at least a few years old. Nonetheless, we were on our way out of town on Saturday morning, and had nowhere to keep her. So we took her with us.
Yesterday morning I went to the vet and they found that she had a microchip, and we obtained the phone number for the owner. Turns out that they live just down the street from us (not too far from where we found the dog). So I called, leaving all sorts of numbers, and waited patiently to hear from them. Nothing.
Denise and I went out to dinner, then a movie. Still nothing. Wanting to do the Right Thing, we hitched our newest family member (dubbed Princess by then) to her leash and took a walk to the address in question. There was a car pulling in, and out came a youngish couple and a friend. Looked like they had just pulled in from dinner or something, and they seemed very excited to have their baby back safe and sound.
We came home, a bit saddened that Princess was gone, but still happy that things had worked out - she had found her way back to her family and all was right with the world. Of course, that wouldn't make for much of a story.
This morning, a neighbor calls to say that she thinks she just saw the same dog on the loose, a bit further down the street. Beging the aforementioned sap that I am, I quickly jumped in the car and went looking. Not too long thereafter, I found her, taken in by a friendly neighbor who had seen her poking around.
At this point you have to wonder. After having your beloved pet back for just a few hours, you let her out again, and she's on the loose? That's just wrong. It's not that these people want to have her wandering - that isn't it at all. But they seem unable to grasp the concept of keeping their dog under their control. We had minor problems throughout the weekend, but nothing that would have kept us from preventing her to escape again - demonstrated by the fact that we came home with her again.
Now Princess (actually Ruby) is back home again, we wonder how long it will be before we see her on the road again. And even more importantly, what do we do then?
Comments (3)
If those people have children, I shudder to think of how they will raise them.
Posted by Ted on July 7, 2005 9:39 AM
As an interesting, or perhaps scary, aside, guess who was on our porch this morning? Sure enough, little Princess was sitting outside, patiently waiting for someone to ler her in. I called the owner, who promptly told me that he would call me back as he was on a business call, and have yet to hear from him (currently been about 20 minutes, he said it would be 5). We'll see how it goes.
Posted by Chad Everett on July 7, 2005 9:44 AM
My friend is raising a german shepherd, shutzen(sp?) class dog. After helping train this animal for many months now it confounds me how many people just buy a pet and then don't care. These animals have pack orientation, drives, and feelings that are generally never considered or even met. They are little pooches that are adored and coo'd like some live action plush toy.
People who can't raise animals with the right things in mind I would wager don't have the right things in mind when raising anything.
It takes knowledge and responsibility, something most of our area and country generally lacks.
Nice to see another local blogger!
-a
Posted by C9 on July 11, 2005 12:04 PM