May 10, 2009:

Hero on Board

There was one summer in Austin when I found a few different dogs. I was a pet sitter at the time, and one of the areas in which we had a lot of clients was also a largely fenceless well-to-do community. Sometimes people's dogs would leave their huge unfenced yards and wander off to screw with traffic.

One day there was a collar-less black lab in the middle of Westlake Drive, which is a winding, narrow road. He kept getting in front of cars and some guys that were working on the power lines nearby were trying to catch him so he wouldn't get hit. They finally caught him and asked if I could help. I took him in my car, figuring he belonged to somebody in the neighborhood (which he did) and that it wouldn't be too big of a deal to find the owners.

One week and many hours of manpower later his lackadaisical owners finally responded to the "found" signs I had put up. They never put up any signs of their own (I worked in the neighborhood every day and had been looking) and they told me they had seen my sign a few days before they decided to call about "Rollie."

Rollie's owners were really nice when they came to pick him up but it bugged me that they had such a laid back attitude about getting him back. I bought a staple gun to put those "found" flyers up guys -- pretend to take this seriously!

Anyhoot, no more than two weeks later I saw a chubby yellow lab sitting alone on the side of the same road in that same neighborhood. Her head was thrown back in what looked like a forlorn howl and there were no people around at all. I still had visions of Rollie's suicidal traffic dodging in my mind so I stopped to pick her up.

The problem was, I also had Rollie's lazy, spoiled owners in my mind and I was mad that yet another dog owner in the rich neighborhood of Westlake was neglecting to take care of his or her dog. So I made another round of "found" signs and put them up while the new yellow lab stayed with a friend.

When this new dog's owner called me several days later she was pretty pissed. Like Rollie's owners, she too had waited a couple of days after seeing the signs to bother to call and see if my "found" dog was her lost one. She described her dog to me and where she had been when they lost her and we established that this was probably her dog. After several minutes of her snotty tone I asked her what the problem was. She said "Well, for starters, you took my dog from in front of my house, and secondly, you put up signs that said "Found: Fat Yellow Dog."

Both those things were true, but in my defense there was a 10 ft. concrete wall separating the side of the road where I found her dog and the actual front of her house. On the other hand, the signs I put up did say "Fat Yellow Dog." Sadly (or heroically, depending on how you look at it), instead of backing down, I told her that the signs must have been accurate because when she saw them she immediately thought of her own dog. What followed was a long and ugly argument which ended with her accusing me of stealing her dog as some kind of con game. Even though I'd made no mention of a ransom or even a reward. I realized then that this was no country rube I was dealing with – she'd clearly seen the fat-dog-stealing-and-returning-for-free con before.

In conclusion, when I found Buddy a year later my friends Chris and Michelle accused me of stealing yet another dog out of somebody's yard. It turned out that nobody answered the signs I put up for Buddy and now it's 7 years later and we're still madly in love. Thanks neglectful dog owners of Westlake, you finally made my dreams come true.

love,

Hillbilly Justice

Added May 10, 2009

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