My second lost dog rescue was markedly less satisfying than my first, and this time I had my boyfriend along with me for the ordeal.
It was early in the afternoon on a Saturday, and we were driving back from a last-minute brunch at my new favorite breakfast place with some friends. Just so there’s no confusion, we’re not the type of couple that regularly “brunches.” I’m calling it a brunch because it took place after 10 a.m. (as someone who regularly eats breakfast around 5 a.m., it just seems excessive to still be on breakfast after 10), and because of the diversity of the foods that were consumed: my boyfriend got a patty melt, his cousin had some kind of sandwich, Trusty and his weird eating daughters had some breakfast sampler, and I had apple cinnamon crepes, turkey sausage, a small bowl of fresh fruit, and a Sunrise Smoothie made with orange juice, pineapple juice, and strawberries.
None of this has anything to do with the lost dog, but I just wanted to tell you about the bomb brunch I had that day.
Instead of heading straight home, we decided to turn off into a subdivision in one of the affluent areas we drive through on the way back. I know we’re not the only people that sometimes like to slow the car to a neighborhood watch-provoking crawl and provide our commentary on the huge, beautiful homes like we’re on an episode of House Hunters.
“I like the brick, but that front door would have to go.”
“I don’t like the way that driveway looks…. And the garage configuration is weird.”
“See that one window there? On the left? I don’t like that.”
Yours for $1.2 million. …But what’s up with those three triangular roof shapes in the front?
Palos Patch
It’s so satisfying too, as if it were guaranteed that the owners were sitting inside the house with their rich people senses tingling: I get the feeling there are middle class people in a Honda outside making fun of my house’s facade…
The more you can’t afford it, the more fun it is! Until you get to the home you can afford, and you suddenly feel very, very sad.
When you’re not being overly critical of the houses, you’ll be pointing out all the homes you deign acceptable to consider moving into.
“Ohhhhh, I love that one. I could see myself living there.”
I have no idea why we do this to ourselves. Sure, it’s fun to fantasize about having the down payment and income to afford the house of your dreams, but I think deep down, part of us hopes the person that owns the home of our dreams will come out of their house, take pity on our less privileged situation, and just offer us the keys to their home.
“Here, you take it. I want you to have it. I’ll continue to pay for it, too. I know you’ll appreciate it more than me. After seeing the expression you had on your face when you were gawking at my house for ten minutes, I knew that instead of calling the police, I should just accept that you are true rightful owner of this home.”
My boyfriend and I were creeping up on a gorgeous white-bricked mansion (with a disproportionately sized front yard that was not to our liking) when an unattended black lab ran out in the middle of the street roughly 20 feet in front of the car. I stopped as soon as I saw it, which wasn’t hard considering I was sliding along at a stakeout-esque 10 MPH. For a second my boyfriend and I just stared at the dog waiting to see if its owner was following along behind it leash-free, but no one showed up.
This isn’t the lab we found, but she was every bit as adorable.
Animal Dream Guide
I put the car in park and slowly started to open my door.
“Careful, honey. Don’t get yourself bit,” my boyfriend warned.
Once outside the car, the dog started wagging her tail from afar. I knelt down and called, “Come here!” and she started trotting my way with her head low. When she got to me, she laid down with her belly up in the middle of the street right next to my car like some movie about unlikely friendships that you knew was going to make you ugly cry at the end. My boyfriend got out of the car, and we both gave the nervous lost lab a thorough belly rub. It took some coaxing, but eventually we convinced her to stand upright so we could take a look at her collar.
Her name was Abby, and the address listed on her tag belonged to a residence on the very street we were on—all we had to do was find the house numbered 112. We looked around for the nearest address and saw the white estate was labeled 115. This was going to be so easy it almost seemed greedy to think of it as a good deed.
My boyfriend took off his scarf (worn for warmth, not fashion—no judgment, but I don’t date men who wear fashion scarves) and cleverly tied it around Abby’s collar like a makeshift leash. Unlike any other dog I’ve ever walked, Abby didn’t almost rip your arm off with every step. We fell into a pattern of Abby sniffing and us reading addresses off of mailboxes.
Pretty soon it just looked like a surprisingly clean homeless couple was taking their trusty dog for a stroll in the rich people’s neck of the woods.
We strode down the block and noticed that we had gone from house 115 to mailbox 111. There was another unmarked mailbox attached to the 111 mailbox, but we assumed that also belonged to house 111 because rich people sometimes like to receive their newspaper in a separate mailbox than their Neiman-Marcus catalogs and monthly American Express statements. We kept on walking and reached house 110, another mailbox numbered 111, and suddenly house number 103. What the fuck is going on here?
The further we traveled with the dog on the other end of my boyfriend’s scarf, the more nervous I became that people seeing us in broad daylight would get the wrong idea. As ingenious as the scarf leash was, it could easily be mistaken for canine theft. If I saw two people I didn’t recognize in my neighborhood walking a dog using a scarf, I’d assume they’re either too poor to be proper dog owners or perpetrating some kind of crime. Either way, we were risking our reputations to save this black lab.
We started heading back to the car to consult the GPS on my iPhone, because the address situation in this block didn’t make any sense. Furthering the confusion, the mailboxes in this subdivision were all across the street from the houses to which they belonged.
I was so nervous about being seen and implicated in grand theft Fido (I know it’s not my best, but I needed a dog word that ended in “o”) that I decided to put Abby in the backseat of my car while we pinpointed the exact location of her home. This is a big deal, because I have leather interior, and I hate to be that bitch about my Honda, but I don’t like paws all over my backseat.
Paradoxically, empty water bottles, old CDs, and receipts littering every corner of my car don’t seem to bother me whatsoever.
We found the approximated blue dot location of Abby’s house, and it turned out to be that house with the two mailboxes: one labeled 111, the other unlabeled. If you’re keeping up, this means one of two things:
1.) House 111 has two different mailboxes, one across from their actual home and one at house 112. This can only mean the husband or wife in house 111 is receiving mail from someone with whom they’re having an affair and paying the owner of house 112 to maintain their not-so-secret mailbox (which means Abby’s owner has questionable morals). Interestingly, the other spouse in house 111 is either also guilty of something or so unobservant that they never questioned why another house on the block has a mailbox with their address number on it.
2.) House 112 is receiving their mail in a mailbox numbered 111, likely causing confusion to mail carriers and UPS drivers everywhere. Anyone who isn’t compassionate towards mail carriers isn’t fit to have a dog, because one of your main responsibilities as a dog owner is being the neutral mediator in all mail carrier/dog disputes.
Of all the beautiful homes we’d passed, it just so happened that Abby’s owner owned the least impressive home on the block. Why does that always exist in every suburb? You pass a string of homes that are all well maintained and landscaped, and then all of a sudden there’s always that one house with chipped paint and prehistoric shrubs growing out in front. Have these people not heard of curb appeal?
Honestly, I’m not sure what would have made me more nervous: walking up to the largest, most impressive house on the block with my boyfriend walking a labrador on a scarf leash, or creeping through the brush to get to the home that’s jeopardizing everyone else’s property value. I suspect the pair of us looked like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza either way.
We walked down the long gravel driveway and climbed up a set of uneven stairs made with gravel and planks of wood. Perhaps what was most alarming about the appearance of this house was that there was seemingly no front. The opposite side of the house from where we were backed up to a forest area with trees, yet when we got to the door, there was no doorbell or even any address to dignify this was house 112. Creepy.
The door we found lead to a screened-in porch (or sunroom, if you’re fancy). My boyfriend looked around the yard for an open gate or broken tether to see if Abby had been outside when escaped. It was entirely possibly she pushed open the flimsy door to the porch.
I knocked on the porch door and called, “Hello? Is anyone home?”
My boyfriend uncovered a long white leash attached to a contraption mounted on the house next to the door. It didn’t appear to be broken or otherwise damaged.
“I bet she was attached to this.”
He released Abby from her scarf leash and clipped the tether back onto Abby’s collar. It bothered me to think of leaving without making sure we were at the right house, so I peered inside once more and knocked more vigorously, “Hello? Is anyone home?”
Finally, an older woman surfaced. I wasn’t trying to stare inside her house, but I felt like this entire situation had taken an odd turn, and I really wanted to resolve everything so we could stop trespassing on this unimpressive private property.
The elderly woman was hurrying around getting who knows what—shoes, pepper spray—and eventually she showed up at the other side of the door. I stammered, “I-is this your dog? We found her walking in the middle of the street, and I just wanted to make sure she was yours before we left. I guess she got off of her leash.”
This lady seemed to be avoiding eye contact with me. I got the feeling this wasn’t going to be the tearful “thank you” I’d anticipated. Abby was standing in front of me now, and her owner addressed her directly,
“Abby, did you go somewhere you’re not supposed to go? Did you leave? What did you do? Who’s going to guard the house if you’re not here!”
I talk to/sing to my pets all the time, too, but when a human person who just found your dog is asking you some basic questions, you answer them first. I also to stifle a snort when this woman mentioned guarding the house, because judging by Abby’s submissive behavior in the street, this dog was too much of a sweetheart to be guarding anything.
After a few more remarks directed only to the dog, Abby’s owner finally explained, “She does this every four months or so. Usually the trees keep her in.” Well that sounds effective.
I’m not sure if we’d stumbled upon the neighborhood shut-in, if this lady was worried the wife of the guy who lives in 112 had finally coming a-knocking about the secret mailbox, or if this lady really thought my boyfriend and I were going to break into her house or something, but this whole exchange was so uncomfortable that I just wanted to get out of there now that we knew Abby was back home, relatively safe with her weirdo owner.
When we got back to the car, I was happy Abby was back where she belonged, but I felt like she and I had really bonded. My boyfriend doesn’t just tie his scarf to every dog. It was tough to leave her behind knowing her owner may be facilitating a snail mail love affair, and worse, that Abby could get loose again and not find her way back next time.
It turns out that old adage is true:
With great power, comes great responsibility.
Do you creep up on houses you can’t afford, too? Did you ever want to keep/steal a pet you know you couldn’t really keep for yourself? (Doesn’t it crush your soul?)