Lady Friend and I had every intention of doing nothing Saturday except relaxing and enjoying the relative quiet that the cold weather brings to my street. She’s still quite under the weather and I woke up drowning in The Crimson Tide and bleeding like an English Royal. I have a new book that I planned on reading cover to cover today and LF woke up without a fever and was all excited about reading her new math-related book (dork).
But oh no. It can never be simple for us.
LF went out to her car and spotted this girl dodging traffic and completely terrified. She was wearing a leash and a collar, with no ID tags, and there was no one around at all. This is the same dog that LF thought she saw the day before running loose through Pigtown. She managed to coax the dog towards her, grabbed her leash, and then put her in my backyard so we could come up with a plan.
I swear I think stray animals have some kind of homing device for lesbians. They always find their way my block. The pets that I have now all found me. I never went out of my way to get a dog or a cat, they just showed up one day. The word must be out on the streets of Pigtown because apparently stray dogs and cats know there are two push-overs/suckers on the 1— block of —– Street.
Nearly every other urban hillbilly and wannabe gansta walks around here with a pit bull. It’s a status thing. I spent nine years working as a veterinary technician and I know how these kinds of dogs are typically treated by their thug owners. Rarely was there ever any preventive care involved, only trauma care for things like poisoning, skull fractures via blunt force trauma, gun shot wounds, dog baiting injuries, evisceration via dog fighting, etc. If you are ever curious about seeing just how evil people can be, work in a city veterinary hospital. Believe me, it takes everything in me to not go all vigilante on these soulless wastes of life and do to them what they’ve done to their dogs. There was absolutely no way in hell I was going to walk around Pigtown and ask strangers if they knew who the dog belonged to. We decided to take her out to the BaltCo Humane Society, hoping that her chances for adoption would be better out there than in the city.
The dog was very friendly, but she was really wild and excited in the car and honestly, we were kind of scared because she was so fricking strong. It made for a very long drive. We finally made it to the Humane Society where I learned that the BCHS doesn’t take stray animals. When I walked in to the crowded waiting room at the BCHS, the girl who helped me seemed put off and irritated when I told her I found a stray dog. She told me in that extremely bitchy “you mean you don’t already know this?” tone that, by law, all stray animals have to go to animal control. I’m not a big fan of people speaking to me (or anyone) in a condescending manner so I said, “I know you deal with this type of thing everyday, but not everyone who walks through your front door does. So if you can help me, that would be great. If you can’t, then would you direct me to someone who can?” It always amazes me how some people do a 180 in their attitude when you push back a little bit. From that point on, she became super nice and super helpful.
She pulled out Lost & Found binders to see if our stray dog matched any of the descriptions. No luck there. She then went and got a scanner and scanned all over the dog’s body to see if the dog had an ID chip. No luck their either. She suggested taking her home, holding her for a day or two, and then “surrendering” the dog to the BCHS since she wouldn’t be considered a stray at that point(??). Taking this dog home was not an option for me or for LF, so the BCHS girl told us that BaltCo Animal Control would be the only other option, unless we wanted to take the dog to the nearest police precinct. I had never heard of taking a stray dog to the police station before, but knowing that we couldn’t handle another long drive with this dog, we opted to check out the closest police station.
We really didn’t know what to expect once we got to the station, but when I walked up to the desk and told the officer on duty that I had a stray dog I’d like to hand over, she said, “No problem, ma’am. Just give me a couple of minutes to get a kennel set up for her and then you can bring her in.”
I was in shock!
We brought the dog in and she was wagging and wiggling herself sideways in that way that puppies and young dogs do. The police officer fawned all over her and started talking to her in a baby voice. LF asked what would happen at this point and the officer said they would hold the dog for four days and then contact pit bull rescue groups and possibly animal control. She told us that police officers get first dibs on the dogs after four days and that most dogs that get dropped of there usually wind up going to a permanent home with a cop. She told us that was how she wound up getting her dog not too long ago. LF and I felt worlds better and had a really good feeling leaving the police station.
When we got back to my house, the feel-good buzz evaporated when I found a note in my mailbox saying: “That dog you all have is mine. Call me at…”
Great.
How often does something like that ever happen when you find a stray animal?? And where was the guy when the dog was running loose all around Pigtown and then hanging out in my backyard?? How did he even know we found his dog?? Anyway, Lady Friend called the guy and he sounded pretty young. She told him where we found her, where we took her, what their procedure is, and then gave him the address and phone number of the police station. He didn’t really seem all that interested and was just kind of indifferent about the whole situation. He didn’t say thank you either, which speaks volumes in my little book. Maybe the dog’s not worth it to him. Maybe the guy has a criminal record and didn’t want to deal with the police. Who knows? I still have that feeling in my gut that we did the right thing.
