An Unintentional Dog Whisperer

So I know this is my craft-type blog but something happened to me on the way home yesterday that deserves to be in the blogiverse.

So I was walking home from work yesterday around 4pm through one of the not-so-nice neighborhoods of Christchurch (it was still light outside so less scary). My walk is around 3km. I get to about the halfway mark and all of a sudden I see something moving in one of the overgrown, deserted lots where a house used to be (earthquake). I see that it is a dog, with a collar on, sniffing round quite happily, with no owner in sight.

Bad photo, looking at the Dog Catcher..

Now at this point I cross the road to the other side because wandering dogs tend to think I'm awesome and that I would make a good owner. This is something I don't want. I am a cat lover with no dog experience whatsoever. I looked back after crossing the road, thinking that it hadn't spotted me. Wrong.

It crossed the road too and starts walking along beside me. I get a bit scared because it might be a scary, mean dog and yell at it and tell it to 'GO HOME!' Nope nothing. Grrr. Then I come across a man and his young son and I attempt to ask him what to do. His advice? Don't be scared, just shoo it away. He shoo'd it across the street and kept following me. Dang. I kept walking thinking that in no time at all I would be on a very busy main road and this dog would get squashed trying to follow me. At this point it was back on the same side of the road as me. So I started looking for a house with a car parked outside, one that didn't look so gangsta. I settled upon a block of flats with a blue SUV outside.

With the dog following me I knocked on the door and waited. A lady came out wearing a dressing gown. Hmmm. I explained that this dog was following me and I burst into tears. I felt very worried that this dog had gotten lost and might get squashed. But it wouldn't leave me. She had a dog of her own and seemed relatively sympathetic and went and got the phone book. My plan was to call the pound. So after a few tries I was told that I wasn't reporting a 'wandering dog' I was reporting a 'held dog'. Because I was holding her. In the meantime the lady had given the dog (which she told me was a girl) some water and biscuits. She didn't seem keen on me staying and waiting for the dog catchers, which could have been up to 2 hours, so she gave me her dogs leash and I decided to take the dog to my place to wait.

So I thanked her and promised to take back the leash and off I headed on my first official Dog Walk. Luckily the dog was well trained and I could control her easily enough. When I walked her past people I made the leash shorter and a few of them admired her. Then we waited for ages at the traffic lights and I made her sit and she did. Then it was just a few minutes and we were home.

I called Dave and he told me there was some rope in the garage so I tied up the dog and got her some of my kitty's food (which just happens to be dog roll) and some water. She seemed quite happy but barked really loud when I went inside. She then went for a little sniff around the garden, did some business in the bark garden (phew, not on the grass) and promptly threw up. Twice. Ew. I didn't have time to do anything about it because the Dog Catcher showed up. He scanned her for a microchip but sadly she didn't have one. This means it would be very hard to find her owners. She had a collar but no tags or markings. So off she went with the Dog Catcher and that was it. It was all over so fast. I didn't even have time to say goodbye to the wee girl. So I hope she gets a good new home.

Today I told Dave (who is a dog lover) that I would take another way home. He said if another dog followed me that I should bring it home and we should keep it. Silly.

Such a cute, friendly dog

I managed to get a couple of photos of her before she got taken away. She was mostly white with black patches over her eyes and ears. The Dog Catcher said she was just a young dog so maybe just under a year old? She has some Staffy in her but maybe crossed with a Labrador because she had long legs and a lean body, not barrel chested like a pure Staffy. It's Dave's favourite dog mix. Luckily he was still at work when all this happened or we may still have a dog, against our landlords wishes. And my cats wishes too. She was not impressed.

So it was an emotional and semi-traumatic end to a busy work day. It all seems surreal now but I have photos as proof.