Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Doggie Karma

I found this very cute dog once.  I was living in Colorado and I lived on an apartment along a golf course. I was out walking my dogs one evening and it happened to be snowing out. I think that was the winter Colorado had like non stops blizzards. So I was out walking the dogs in the evening while there was still enough light out to see, and suddenly this little white puffy dog started to follow along with us. He was cute and seemed to feel right at home walking with me and my two dogs, and stayed with us until we got home. I figured that he would go back to his house when we got back to my apartment and went inside. But instead of leaving he just stayed right on the edge of my deck looking out at the snow falling again just like he owned the place. I watched some TV before going to bed for the night, the whole evening just watching him sit there. By the time it got cold and dark, I figured it wasn’t safe for this little puffy all white dog to be outside for the night where visibility isn’t great, and I didn’t want him to get injured or anything. So I thought I would see what would happen if I let him come inside.  He didn’t need any coaxing to enter into my house. He ran right in and after taking a quick sniff around the place; he just lay down on the floor in front of the couch and went to sleep. At night I kenneled my dogs up in case they decided not to like this new addition, and I closed me and the puffy dog in the bedroom where he spent the whole night sleeping at the base of my bed like a perfect gentleman. It became very very obvious that he had a home somewhere and they must be missing him if they even know that he is gone.

The next morning I put one of the extra leashes on him and all three of us walked around the neighborhood looking for any sign of where he came from. I was hoping that he would kinda lead me back to where he was familiar, but instead he just walked along with my two dogs without a care in the world as to where we were going.  I took him it my clinic to see if he had a microchip and he didn’t. Then I started to call all the various shelters to see if anyone had reported him lost. Nobody had reported a lost American Eskimo dog and they asked me if I wanted to keep him or to bring him to the shelter. I said that honestly  he seems to be doing totally ok at my house with me and my dogs and seems to have perfect manners, so I told them that I was ok holding on to him for a little bit.  They assured me that they would call if anyone called into report him missing. They said that if after 1 week goes by its pretty unlikely that he will be claimed.  At this point I figured that I needed to start calling him something besides puffy so I started to call him Cooper.  Cooper ended up staying with me for five days. He was a great dog, he just stayed in the house while I went to work, slept on the floor in whatever room I was in, and he and my dogs seemed to become buds.

The shelter called me to report that his owners may have called in and they give me their number. I called and after talking to the woman we did determine that Cooper was indeed theirs. She said that she has a disabled son and he accidentally let out Klondike (of course the American Eskimo was named Klondike… how not original that is!)  They had been looking all over the neighborhood for him but because of the snow it was hard for them to get around. They finally called the shelter and that’s how they got my number.  It turns out that they lived pretty far away from me he took quite a trek. But I got the address and told them that after work I would drive on over to deliver him. For some reason they weren’t able to drive to my house, maybe because of the weather.   When I got to their house it was obvious that he was indeed very much missed. The son was so happy to see him and he was jumping around just as excited. They were so thankful that I had taken such good care of him and they tried to give me 100 bucks for my trouble. I refused the money. I told them I truly believe in dog karma. I just would hope that if someone ever found one of my dogs out running around, that they would take as good of care of it as I did for Klondike. I really believe that good deeds do get rewarded and so I wanted to make sure that all the cards were stacked in my favor, just in case I ever needed it down the road with my own pets. She was really persistent about paying me something but I was equally as persistent in refusing. I mean he was really no trouble at all. Besides the food I fed him I didn’t have to do anything differently with him then I did with my own two dogs.

To this day I think about Cooper often. I just can’t come to call him Klondike cause its so cliché. I think that those are the little things that just make me who I am. Just the other night I was driving home and I saw a little white poodle out running loose down a sidewalk along a busy road. I instantly stopped and pulled off the road and even thought it was raining  pretty hard,  I got out of my car and tried to coax this dog to me with some treats, because I didn’t want anything bad to happen to it. Someone in one of the houses near came out and told me that it was their dog as this coaxing was going on. They seemed pretty aloof to the fact that the dog was out running loose without any sort of supervision, and said that it always stays close to the house and or the sidewalk. I told that them that working in the vet field for as long as I have, I have seen so many dogs come in dead or injured because owners thought that exact same thing. It’s that sort of attitude that drives me nuts. If I had gotten that little dog to come to me, I would have spent my own free time to knock on a few doors to see if anyone owned him, before just taking him home and doing the exact same thing with it as I did with Cooper. It’s just the kind of person that I am, I’m a rescuer.  And honestly I am just trying to build up all the good karma points I can in the dog world just in case someday something should happen to Morgan, so I’ll have plenty to cash in.  Let’s hope that I’ll never have to use them but I have faith that I will get rewarded if the time ever does come. 

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