Lost and Found

On Saturday evening, I decided to take Abby for a long walk to help make up for my week long absence. Very often when I go on these long walks, I take my phone with me and call my mom or my sister or my dad. This time, it was my mom. All of the sudden, in mid-sentence I interrupted my mom and said, "Where did YOU come from little guy?" My mom, confused, just stayed silent. "Little puppy, where is your mama?" This little puppy had run up to us out of nowhere and was sniffing Abby. I looked around. Usually when this happens, an owner will come running and apologize profusely on the puppy's behalf. No one came running. I bent down and let him sniff me, then looked at the tag on his collar. All it said was "Lost Dog Rescue" and gave a phone number for the shelter. I told my mom I had to go and I called the number. It was a machine that gave me no chance to leave a message or talk to a human being, but it did give an emergency number. Having no paper, I had to call the machine twice in order to commit the emergency number to memory. I dialed, and immediately someone picked up (I think it was a home line). I told him the situation and he told me to hang tight and he would try to find more info and call me back. I sat on the curb, in the 90 degree heat, and waited. I asked a few people that were outside if they recognized the dog, but no one had any solid information. After about 10 minutes, he called me back and asked me if I could take the dog home and keep him safe until he could get someone out to pick him up. He had been unable to locate the pup's file, and therefore could not find his owner's information.

As I walked through my front door, Amber (who was over visiting) and Kim (my roommate) looked at me and busted out laughing, saying something along the lines of, "Karyn! You can't just go around stealing people's dogs." I relayed the whole story to them and we decided to call him Junior. After approximately 6 more phone calls and two more hours, I received a frantic call from a young girl, "I heard you might have my dog." I immediately grabbed little Junior and started walking towards his street. When the 15 year old girl came into view, little Junior began wagging his tail like crazy. I learned that his real name was "Meatball" and that he must have escaped through the garage door when no one was watching. I told Meatball's mama that she needed to get an updated tag on him with his home phone number and she promised to do so. Little Meatball is now home, hopefully safe and sound.