So I was getting off the bus, with some random pittsburgh people, on my way home from school today. And as we were walking towards our houses, up the street we see this dog walk out into the middle of the road, entirely by himself, and so me and this girl, twenty-four years old-ish, professional looking, attractive, iPod protected from the environment, stop, and are like, “Dog, why are you by yourself?”
And we are all like oh he has lots of tags, so that is good. But we look and the dog’s name is Winston, and the owners live in Clarksville, Maryland. Which we decide is no good, because we are in Pittsburgh, and thus the dog is quite far from home. So we call the number on the main tag, and she tells me no one answers, and that there was a strange message. She leaves her name, and my phone number (she has called using my phone, as hers was in her apartment).
So we decide this is bad, and we are stumped.
At which point she decides to go upstairs, and get her phone, and a leash, so she does that and I am sitting with the dog, on the corner of Maryland and Howe. Winston, who looks super scared and then just sort of starts like quiet barking, in all directions
And then these two people, a couple, park their van right nearby, and are looking at me and the Winston (still barking), and are like “cute dog”. To which I respond, “Yes, he is. Have you ever seen him before so I can give him back to his owners?”
And they think this is disastrous, poor little Winston, outside in the cold streets of Pittsburgh! They decide we should call more numbers, since this dog conveniently has five tags (he must either get lost a lot, or have very over-protective owners). So the boy (the thirty year old boy, with gray stubble starting to come through in his trendy beard) calls the vet tag, but they are closed.
Then my original partner in dog rescue returns, with her phone, but without a leash. She did bring a belt, which I think was a pretty good effort, but the other woman decides she can get a leash, and so she runs up into her building and brings down a leash.
While she is doing this (conveniently we all seem to live within a block of here), I decide it is time to let Winston show us where he lives, so very slowly we cross the street and he discovers a napkin, which he decides smells pretty good – good enough to stop barking. Maybe he just needed the walk.
We realize though that there is a van with Maryland plates a few cars away from where we are, but parking is pretty busy, so it could have been like any of the nearby houses.
By now the woman with the leash has returned, and so now we can really let Winston pick up speed, and me and the guy let him walk, and he walks right up on the porch of one of the houses.
We decide we have nothing to lose and so we ring the bell.
After maybe twenty second a woman appears, and opens her inner door, looks at us, looks at Winston, then back at us, and smiling says, “Hello?”
She looks about fifty-seven years old, and is wearing this really atrocious white blouse, and a shin length black skirt with white polka dots, that looks pretty seriously early seventies in creation.
“We found this dog…”
“Okay…”, with this creepy little half laugh.
”...and we were wondering if you have ever seen him before, or know where he could live?”
At which point she pauses for a few seconds, and then lets us in on the secret, “Oh, he is our dog”.
I am super confused because she doesn’t really look thrilled or anything, still hasn’t opened the outer door to let the dog in, and is just sort of waiting there, like this is all a strange joke.
And then she says, “He is visiting, he must have got out of the yard. Thank you.” We decide that this must be good enough, she lets the dog in, and we leave, as we walk away noticing there are maybe ten people in her living room, all looking with excitement at the event taking place on her porch.
I am not sure exactly what happened in the conversation, but it is probably something more normal, like it was one of her guests, and so she wasn’t really that attachd to it – they were making Winston stay out in the yard – and she was confused because she hadn’t realized that he was lost, and he was only a few houses away from home. Though wandering in the middle of the road, which is not a good place for a small animal to be. But he got home safe, and that counts.
So then the four of us decided that we performed some awesome community teamwork and I came home to my apartment, newly with heat, enthused with the feeling of good karma.
