Saturday, June 25, 2005

Sara, the Do-Gooder, Strikes Again

My do-good nature has back fired in my face again!

Remember when I tried to help with Habitat for Humanity and it was distasterous? Today, it was the Humane Society.

My mother and I returned from coffee to find an adorable black and white Shitzu on the burm of her yard. She was almost in the street. We called her to us and she started to follow us around the yard. She had no tag, just a red collar. My mom was sure she 'knew' all the dogs in the neighborhood and she didn't know this dog. She was gentle and kind. We discussed what we should do. We waited for 30 minutes and decided to bring her to the Humane Society because if someone had lost their dog, they would surely call the Humane Society to see if some Do-Gooder had turned it in.

I carried the dog in my lap to the Humane Society. We left her and on the way home, I called the Humane Society twice because I had not asked what would happen to the dog if she remained unclaimed. They said after five days if she went unclaimed, they would put her up for adoption. They also said that they do put animals to sleep! Unacceptable. I quickly started going through scenarios in my head about how I could come back up to North Dakota in five days and adopt this dog.

We arrived home. I was in great distress.

The men that were working on a sidewalk in front of our house came up to us and asked, "Did you guys find a dog? That dog belonged to your next door neightbor."

We both screamed "NO!" We felt horrible. First, why didn't we go and knock on anyone's door? We should have. My mom kept saying, "No, they have a black dog. Not a black and white dog."

I called the Humane Society again to tell them we knew who the owner was. They assured me that he was already on his way to pick up the dog. When the neighbor returned home, he was not upset. He felt as guilty as we felt. He was dog-sitting for his mother-in-law and that was why my mom did not recognize the dog. He was frantic because he thought he had lost the dog. He assured us that the dog now had a tag and would be watched more carefully. We were glad that the kind dog would not be put to sleep. It all worked out in the end, but I learned an important lesson...

Knock on doors and check with people before bringing a dog to the Humane Society. Next time, I will just wait and play with it in the yard for awhile, hoping an owner will show up.

2 comments:

Eyes for Lies said...

We once found a dog wondering without tags. We kept her for a few hours -- but couldn't take her in because of my dogs. So, we decided to take her to my parents some 10 miles away.

But what we did was call the local shelter and asked if anyone had lost a dog. They said no. We left them MY PHONE NUMBER and told them to call us if someone called in a missing dog.

Next thing we know, they accused of us stealing the dog!! They dog catcher cased my house -- and they even looked up my parents phone number and started harassing us there.

We refused to give up the dog until they gave us the owners name. They found the owner but refused!!!

Finally after a stand-off for six hours, they finally agreed. We delivered the dog and as we dropped him off -- the police came down the street. We think he was looking for us- - but we were gone.

We didn't steal the dog for Pete's sake. We were helping it --without dropping it off at the shelter!!!

The dog catcher came to my house the following day harassing me. It was insane.

Dog catching is BIG BUSINESS.
I don't trust these organizations AT ALL! They wanted to collect money from the owner of the lost dog.

Jerks! They lost out.

Eyes for Lies said...

I didn't make it clear. We delivered the dog directly to the owners - bypassing the shelter completely.

We demanded the dog owners address which was about 1 mile from my home.