Monday, February 8, 2010

Lexy's Story: Part 1

I have been meaning to share this story with you guys for so long! The weekend before Thanksgiving, JJ and I took our dog, Piper, for a walk. It was a chilly evening so we were wrapped up in sweatshirts and coats. We started walking down our street and got about 5 houses away when this little brown dog came running out from the side of a house. She was really excited and wanted to come up to us but was too scared to get really close. I knelt down and talked to her. She built up enough courage to come see me and I checked to see if she had any tags. She had a collar on (that was waaaay too tight) but had no tags. Immediately I was irritated. I cannot stand dog owners who are irresponsible. It is not that difficult to make sure your dog has tags!

Anyway, so we stood there for a while not sure what to do. She was running around like crazy and I was terrified she was going to get hit by a car. JJ and I decided to walk up and down the street and ask some of the neighbors if they knew who she belonged to. Most of them had no idea. One of them said they had seen her running around all day but didn't know who she belonged to. (OK am I the only one who worries about a dog running around? I don't think I could see a little dog running around and just not do anything about it!) We talked to this really sweet, retired couple that lives right by us and they said they had seen her another time too and knew that she lived near by. We kept ringing door bells and no one knew who the owner was! I was so frustrated.

We decided to take her back to our house and put her in the garage. I didn't want to bring her in our house because she was covered in poop (she had apparently found some poop and decided it would be fun to roll in it) and I didn't know if she had anything that Piper could catch and get sick. I didn't want to leave her in the garage though because it was so cold and I didn't want the owners to come home and not know where she was. We decided to call animal control.

JJ called around 6:15 and told them what was going on. They were really rude to JJ and told him that since they were closing at 7:00 they would not come pick her up even though we only lived about 20 minutes from them (REALLY? Isn't that your JOB?). If we wanted to bring her over to them we could do that. We talked about it and kept going back and forth. What should we do??? We decided to go ahead and take her. By this time it was about 6:40 so we had to haul some major butt to get there on time. We arrived at 7:05 and ran up to the door. Locked. We drove to the side and rang a bell. A man answered and JJ explained what had happened. The man refused to take her because they closed at 7:00. (I was about to lose it at that point. Why are some people so against helping someone out? Yes, I understand you don't get paid overtime but does that mean you turn us away when we are just trying to do the right thing?) The man told us that two of the animal control trucks went out to pick up an aggressive dog and should be back any minute. We could wait for them if we wanted to.

So we sat and waited. And waited. And waited. We gave up. Who knew how long they would be? We decided to head home. We got about a mile away from animal control when we passed the animal control trucks. We flipped a u-turn and sped back! We once again explained the situation and these guys were MUCH nicer. They said they would hold on to her for 5 days and if no one claimed her they would either put her up for adoption or put her to sleep. I begged them to please call us (even though I knew I would be calling them every single day) before they did anything! They scanned her for a chip and said she did not have one. Then they took her back.

The entire way home I was second guessing our decision. Did we do the right thing? She seemed so scared! What do we do next?

Little did we know, this story was no where near being over. At the end of the story, we would come to realize how incredibly cruel and horrible some people can be and how our lives would never be the same...

5 comments:

Gilsner said...

What an intriguing story! I look forward to hearing the rest of it!

Mrs T said...

Oh I can't wait to know what happened. That poor little dog!

You are nice to care so much.

Mr B & I are the same way. We stopped our car in the middle of the highway once because a little dog was running across the road and just stopped in front of our car. Once we stopped he wedged himself under the car and was trying to bite us. Mr B was under the car trying to grab the little (blind - no wonder it was scared) dog and other people are speeding past us and honking at us for holding up traffic. What did they expect us to do? Just run it over. People make me so ANGRY!!!

Jess said...

Awe good on you for taking her home. It sucks the way everyone else acted though!

JQ Brat said...

you are not the only one who would be worried about a dog running around loose.

i hope this story has a happy ending!

Anonymous said...

GASP! I see there's a part 2 in my reader. Going to that right now...