If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you’ve probably pegged me as a cat lady, and it’s a title I’d accept with purride (and with less embarrassment than what I’m experiencing now for combining the words “purr” and “pride”), but the truth is, I was a stigma-free dog lady long before I owned my first cat. My puppy love runs so deep that I’ve often found myself faced with the same extraordinary circumstance: lost dogs have a way of finding me, and I reunite them with their owners like a touching episode of Maury Povich (the old Maury Povich, before that talk show turned into Real Baby Daddies of Maury Povich).
I highly recommend finding a lost dog if it’s never happened to you. It’ll make you feel like one of the Avengers. Now that I’ve gotten two noteworthy rescues under my belt, I feel like I’ve earned the title of Dogwoman. My costume, by the way, is significantly less sexy than Catwoman’s because of all the obligatory pockets filled with plastic bags and Milk Bone cookies.
I apologize if jumping from the Avengers to Catwoman offended any nerds. I don’t know enough about superheroes to know if that’s a faux pas.
I’ve been doing simple dog rescues since I was a kid, but my first real challenge came in high school. In case you’re wondering, a simple dog rescue is what happens when the dog owner is outside, and their pooch gets away from them somehow (open gate, leash malfunction, etc.), and you just happen to intervene. Challenging dog rescues are when the dog is completely unattended with no owner in sight. Now you know.
I was off from school the day of my first challenging rescue, and thanks to a lost dachshund, I actually had to leave the couch that day.
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My first dog, Milly (rest in peace), was outside barking more than usual. I went to the back bedroom of our house to get the best view of our backyard, and instead of seeing my dog run off some snotty skateboarding preteens or terrorizing a flustered new mother pushing a stroller, I saw a small, brown dachshund running along the opposite side of the fence as my 80 pound German Shepherd. I hurriedly got dressed and went outside, because I didn’t want to find out if this would turn out the same way as David and Goliath.
When I approached, the little hot dog toddled my way as quickly as his tiny legs could carry him. I scooped him up and looked at him more carefully, and came to the seemingly logical assumption that he belonged to our next-door neighbors. They also have a dachshund, and while I don’t claim to know every dog in town, it made sense that if their dachshund were to escape it could easily wander onto our premises.
Without doing any further investigation, I immediately marched next door to return their pooch. Have I mentioned it was before 8 A.M.? Have I also mentioned that I have this weird inherited tension with my neighbors because my mom refers to them exclusively as “The Idiots”?
The Idiot Matriarch opens the door, and I felt like hero. I held the little dachshund up like I was Rafiki presenting Simba to the entire animal kingdom and announced, “I think your dog got out. I found him by our fence.”
She was still wiping the sleepies out of the corners of her eyes (which, by the way, are not called anything other than “sleepies”), when she said to me, “No… That’s not our dog.”
For a second I was incredulous, because I was convinced this was her dog. I was this close to asking, “Are you sure?” because apparently, I think so little of my neighbors that I assume they don’t even recognize their own dachshund early in the morning. Maybe they are idiots, after all!
I furrowed my brows and glanced at her, at the dog, and back at her, and I finally said, “Oh, okay, I’m sorry…?” I looked at my neighbor intently, silently seeking guidance, but she shrugged politely and closed the door with me still earnestly standing there with not-the-neighbor’s dachshund. Idiots.
While walking back to my house, I felt oddly helpless. I had been so sure this was the neighbor dachshund, and knowing it was actually some strange, foreign dachshund made everything so much more complicated. I brought the little guy into my house and left my dog outside, because if I let her in, I knew I’d still have to track down the dachshund’s owners, but not only to return him. I could just picture myself on their front step holding my hat in my hands delivering the bad news.
Only after being rejected by the neighbor did it occur to me to check the dachshund’s collar. Sure enough, he had a tag:
GEORGE
708-###-####
I called the number on his tag, and I expected that George’s owner would answer on the first ring, likely already in a panic over their missing dachshund. He or she would see my number on the caller ID and shout over the noisy search party that had assembled, “QUIET!!!! THIS COULD BE IT!” I’d valiantly explain how I found their dog outside my yard and possibly score a feature in the local newspaper everyone resents finding on their front porch.
As an aside, why do all local newspapers always have the worst names? It’s like after all the legitimate newspapers got custody of the words “times,” “tribune,” and “post,” everyone just gave up.
After four fruitless rings, I got an answering machine:
“You’ve reached the Wilsons! Marie. Todd. BILLY! AnD sTePhAnIe! We can’t make it to the phone right now, but leave your name and number, and we’ll get back to you. BYE!
In the moments before the beep, my mind was racing:
- George belongs to a family that has one of those group answering machine messages? Maybe I should just keep him…
- Why didn’t they say George? They said everyone else. Do they not consider their dog part of the family? WHAT IF I DIALED WRONG?!
BEEP
“Hi, um, my name is Katie Hoffman, and I don’t want you think I stole him or anything! But I found your dog George. He was just outside my fence, and so I have him here if you want to come and get him. This isn’t like a hostage thing or anything. If you could call me back at ________________, I’d appreciate it. Bye!”
WHY DID I MENTION STEALING THEIR DOG AND A HYPOTHETICAL CANINE HOSTAGE SITUATION ON THE MESSAGE!? I didn’t use the word ransom, I don’t think… Maybe that’s where the line is. They probably wouldn’t have ever assumed the person who stole their dog is calling to rub it in their face! Who would?!
I considered pulling that neurotic post-first date move where you call back and leave a second voicemail in a last ditch effort to salvage what little credibility you have left after a textbook case of oversharing in the first message, but I thought better of it and tried to wait patiently for George’s owners to return my call. I decided to do what every bored teenage girl does when she’s trying to pass the time: I invited one of my BFFs over to my house because OMG I FOUND A DOG, AND IT’S SO SWEET!
About half an hour later the phone rang. It was the Wilson family.
“Hello?”
“Hi, is this Katie?”
“Yes, this is she. I called a little earlier and left a message about your dog, George. I have him here at my house—I found him outside.” Please don’t mention my allusion to dognapping. Please don’t mention my allusion to dognapping.
“Thank you so much! The kids are going to be thrilled. He’s never gotten out before. I’m glad he’s okay!”
I gave the lady my address, and she said she’d be over in fifteen minutes. While my friend and I played with George in the meantime, I couldn’t shake a feeling of foreboding. I should have felt relieved George’s owners contacted me within such a reasonable timeframe! I should have been overjoyed I saved a puny dog from a potential blind spot tragedy! Instead, I was getting nervous.
What if this whole “lost dog” set-up was nothing more than an elaborate con preying on a kind-hearted animal lover? What if the Wilsons had been staking out my house to get a feel for when my menacing German Shepherd was outside, and once they established a pattern, they waited until I was off from school to make their move. They dropped George, a dachshund trained in deceit, by the side of my house and parked across the street to see if I’d find him. Like their pathetic puppy pawn, I took the hot dog bait (like I have so many times before during baseball games and lazy summer afternoons).
For all I know, George could have a tiny microphone embedded in his collar that recorded me singing, “How Much Is That Doggy In the Window” to ease his nerves when I first brought him into my house, or saying, “Nice to meet you!” when I shook his tiny snout as a gesture of good faith. (I did take a closer look at his collar, but ultimately I found nothing.)
Maybe they aren’t even the Wilsons! Perhaps that saccharine answering machine prompt was engineered solely to trick hapless victims into thinking they’re actually a legitimate family. They didn’t answer the phone earlier because those no-goodnik thieves were screening my call! …But the Wilsons don’t know my friend is here! She could be my ace in the hole! Surely two teenage girls could fight off some con artists and rescue an innocent pooch from a life of crime! He might need some conditioning, but I’m sure with a lot of love (and treats) we could reform him and get him accustomed to a comfortable life of sleeping and barking at the mailman.
The doorbell rang, and I looked out the front window to see a minivan parked in front with a little girl wobbling around in my front yard. I snatched George and looked out the small window in our front door. There was a middle-aged woman and an eager young boy holding a leash on my porch. Nice acting, kiddo.
I cautiously opened the door, and the bolt of joy this kid experienced when he saw the dog would’ve melted your heart. His eyes got all wide, he violently grabbed his mother’s arm and started jumping up and down. George started wriggling around in my arms, and I passed him over to his rightful owner. The boy’s mother was thanking me profusely, and while I ensured her it was no trouble at all, I still wondered if she had deleted that first message I left on their machine, or if the family was going to discuss it later…
Sure, the Wilsons were probably just a regular family whose dog happened to get out of the yard, but perhaps my act of selfless charity inspired the members of this duplicitous crime ring to move on from The Missing Dachshund Drop and live an honest life. I could be the star of a secular Touched by an Angel!
As I pushed the door shut, I had one of those moments where I felt like I should watch the Wilsons drive away and cry a few happy tears—not like a full on ugly sob—but just a tear or two rolling down my cheeks that would be accented by some brass instruments hitting a crescendo in the background. Instead, my friend and me got some lunch, because rescuing a tiny creature that’s closer to a cat than a dog and suspecting you’re being conned really takes it out of you.
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My experience returning George to his rightful owner prepared for my most recent rescue mission of a black Labrador named Abby. Stay tuned for The Lost Dog Whisperer: Part 2.
Have you ever rescued a lost dog? Have you ever been the witting (or unwitting) victim of a canine con artist?
