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So, yesterday I was walking across campus of ___Insert Name of Ivy League University Here___ on my way into the hospital where I work, and out of nowhere, a medium-sized brown and white dog trots up to me and puts his snout into my hand for a petting. I look around for his mom/dad, there's no one around. No collar on the dog, he's filthy, and has the kind of wiry, schnouzer-like fur that holds on to burrs really well, so he's covered with burrs too. He's happy to stay right with me and be petted. I call loudly, "Anyone lost a dog? Dog here!" I wait for about 5 minutes, yelling at regular intervals. No one shows up. He cavorts happily at my side, always rushing back to me when I say, "C'mere, buddy."
I look more closely. He's not starving to death, you can't see his ribs, but he's thin across his back where it meets his haunches. He's been neutered, which surprises me.
I look down at his face smiling up at me, tongue lolling out. "Oh, HELL," I say. "Come on, then."
I walk him across the street to the building where I work. He's been taught to heel at some point, because he stays right at my side with very little coaxing. I get to my building and a security guard for the hospital takes that exact second to walk out, takes one look at me and the dirty dog and says, "You know you can't bring that dog in here." "It's not my dog!" I say, and then I'm stymied. What am I going to do?
Just then, the dog catches sight of some birds and gives chase. I'm running after the dog, yelling, "Here, buddy! Come here!" and people are looking at him and me, disapproving because the dog is filthy and I don't have him on a leash. "It's not my dog," I mutter as I rush past.
The dog runs directly into one of the university buildings and is standing in the lobby when I catch up, panting and calling, "Come here, boy!" The security guard behind the desk starts shouting, "That filthy dog has to go! Get your dirty dog out of the building!" "It's not my- oh forget it. I'm doing it!" I yell back. I dig my lunch, pasta with fresh tomato sauce, out of my bag. "Want some of this, buddy?" I call, opening the container and placing it on the floor. He comes right over and pasta is apparently VERY satisfactory for the little prince, as he begins wolfing it right away. I take it away and he follows me, inches from my side. Okay, we're getting somewhere.
I take him back outside and let him eat a little more of the pasta, wondering what the heck I'm going to do. Should I try to walk him all the way back up to my car (I happened to drive yesterday), or find somewhere to stash him until I can get my car and bring it back down? A young woman, bless her, stops to help. She says her roommate is a vet student at the veterinary hospital affiliated with my hospital and the university, and maybe if we get him up there, he can help, or else at least they can hold him somewhere until we can call someone.
We start walking him up the street and somewhere along the way the girl finds a piece of webbed cord tied to a fence. She unties it and we make a makeshift leash, which makes things MUCH easier.
We get to the vet school and the woman behind the desk looks at him, looks at me disapprovingly, and says, "We don't take owner surrenders." "He's NOT MY DOG," I say, perhaps a bit more sternly than necessary. "I just found him, on campus, and I work at the hospital and I can't take him in there, can you just put him in a cage until I or someone can find a no-kill shelter?"
"No, but we can put him in a cage and call PACCA," which is animal control. The young woman I was with took me aside. "My roommate and his vet school friends are running a sort of non-official fostering thing, they can probably find him a place. I'll call him as soon as I get back to my office."
I was late for work, and even though I felt weird leaving him, I said okay. The young woman and I exchanged emails and I went to work, almost an hour late.
Yesterday afternoon, she emailed me and told me her roommate had tried but couldn't find a foster place for the dog, but he was still at the vet hospital if I wanted to do something. I called them as soon as I received her email, but they had already sent him to PACCA! I started freaking out, because I know they only have 48 hours to be claimed by their owners and will often be euthanized immediately after.
I called PACCA and was transferred to the voicemail of the woman in charge of the fostering program, Megan. I left her a message, describing the dog as best I could, brown and white big splotches like a cow, wiry coat, has terrier or schnouzer in him, medium sized, a bit bigger than a beagle. About a half hour later, she called me back. She told me she had waited to call me back because she had gone in the back and tried to identify the dog I was talking about, but they had 400 (!) dogs right then and she couldn't be sure. She said I should call the vet hospital back and see if I could get the surrender slip ID# from them so she could find the dog. She also told me that PACCA was completely full, and after 48 hours, his time would be up.
I called the vet hospital, they were too busy to help me, and in the meantime, it's now 5:00 and Megan has gone home for the day, even though I called at 4:55 so I would catch her. (The vet hospital WAS able to tell me that the dog wasn't microchipped, though, which means he's never been through PACCA or the SPCA.)
DAMMIT.
Now I feel completely responsible for the dog, because chances are he could have stayed alive on the street if I hadn't interfered, but now that I've put him into the system, he's got 48 hours to live.
I finally call my husband and say, "...um, I did something." Heh. Luckily, he's as bad as I am with animals and dogs in particular, and he completely understands. He said, "Listen, if it had been me, that dog would be in our house right now, terrorizing the cats." So we agree to drive up to animal control and see if we can weasel our way into the back room so I can find the dog.
We drive up, and the building is in a seriously grim part of town, and when you walk in, it has that shelter smell, which is so fucking depressing. We walk through quiet hallways looking for a human to talk to, and finally we come upon Stoner Johnny.
Stoner Johnny has no people skills whatsoever, but he works at that place and that automatically makes him a complete fucking hero in my book, because my heart would break into a billion pieces every damned day if I had to go in there and do what he does.
Stoner Johnny lets us into the back room and I walk briskly past the rows and rows of caged dogs, because it occurs to me that it's bizarre that I've spent my entire day and evening trying to find and rescue this one dog, and there are hundreds and hundreds of other dogs right there, available. I console myself by reminding myself that HE chose ME.
The number of pit bull-type dogs is overwhelming. I would say it's no exaggeration that it was about 80% bully breeds. I couldn't look at them, then I forced myself to. If we as humans can be so fucking EVIL as to continue to breed these dogs only to throw them away, then the least I can do is look.
Finally, I saw the dog, toward the back, in a cage. He looked absolutely terrified, but wagged his tail as soon as he saw me and pressed his brown nose up against the cage as I reached in to give him a good pet and loving around the ears. My husband, who is probably MORE of a dog freak than I am, had tears in his eyes just walking through the shelter and when he saw the dog, our dog I guess, he just sat right down next to the cage in that deafening room and started talking to him. Johnny gathered up all the paperwork and he and I adjourned to the other room where I wrote all my information on every piece of paper attached to that dog, and took the tag number so I could call Megan this morning.
We're not really allowed to have a dog in the house we're renting, but our landlord is great and we already have two cats, so I'm thinking a $500 pet deposit will smooth everything over. We ARE going to advertise for the owners and also for a good home, for which we will charge an adoption fee and do serious vetting of candidates, including a home visit. But...somehow I think the dog is our dog already.
I think his name might be Rufus.
I'll keep you posted.
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