help these dogs-chloe

ABC Dog School

HELP THESE DOGS

On April 15, 2008, I take a picture of the spotted dog in my yard again. He'd been here two or three times that week. His cable is trashed. Two days later, after I've come home from work and fed dogs, my daughter calls.

   If not for that call, I would have been unaware of the scenario unfolding in the middle dog yard, as I would have been sitting down watching TV. But as I pace around the room talking on the phone, I happen to look out the window, and happen to glance through the hole in the Juniper, and two dogs happen to be in the right place at the right time for me to see there is an extra one!

   I yell, "Oh my God! There's a dog in the yard with Snoopdog!" and I hang up on my daughter and rush downstairs, through the basement, and out to the yard, where I find the neighbor's spotted male in the corner looking nervous, and Snoopdog giving him sidelong glances, as if to say "Should I be worried?"

   I call my dog into the basement and put him in his pen. Then, instead of going for my camera, and calling the neighbor to come and get him, I get a leash over the spotted dog's head, noose style, and lead him out of the yard, and turn him loose. I had thought about a photo, but it was getting dark, and I didn't think it would work. I should have tried. And I should have called her.

   The next day, Friday, is my day off, so I'm free to work on the problem. I needed to be sure this wasn't going to happen while I was at work. The dog who uses that yard all day, is my aged Dalmatian, Liver. I was thankful that it happened in the evening instead of while I was away. I could have come home to find him dead or seriously injured.

   While I am trying to figure out how the dog got into the yard, I see the neighbor in her back yard, so we have a conversation over the fence about how she needs to keep this dog home. She says she'll get him a chain that day.   In the meantime, I spend the day working on fences. The next morning before I leave for work, I see the dog on a chain, but am apprehensive about leaving my dog out.

   Later that day, I realize that they haven't bought a new chain for this dog at all...they've switched him and Chloe so that she is now on his broken cable and using his dog box. Chloe's owner had bought her a nice long strong chain when he left her there, so she wouldn't get loose, like the other ones do, and now she was at risk of that very thing. And he pays these people to take care of her!

   About 7:00PM, I hear a ruckus, and see that Chloe is running around loose! Nobody is home, and they don't usually show up until late on weekends, so when I see she's on the road, I take a leash and treats, to get her. She might remember me from obedience school, but no, she runs into the yard. Well, at least she's off the road.

   I'm fuming mad about this. It would break her owner's heart if she got killed on the road. She's black and it's getting dark. Raining off and on, too. I look for their daughter's phone number so I can let them know Chloe's loose, and find I have two different ones. I try one and it's disconnected. I try the other one, and it belongs to someone else.

   I decide to call Chloe's owner, but that number belongs to someone else, too. So I call his sister, and she finds the right number. Actually, he had just got that number when he gave it to me, and transposed two of the digits. I call and get no answer. Probably with the neighbors. He's like an adopted member of that family.

   I see Chloe's on the road again, so I set out with leash and treats, and this time she comes up to me. She's wearing a choker chain! I bring her home and put her in Snoopdog's outside pen. About 10:00 that night, I hear a pounding noise. I'm in the basement doing the bedtime chores. I go out to get one of my dogs in, and there's the Mrs., standing outside the fence with a rope in her hand, yelling, "That's not your dog!"

   I knew she had a bad temper, but why is she so mad about this? And how did she know where the dog was? She's yelling, in her low-pitched gruff voice, straining it to it's limits, and demanding I give her that dog. I really want to explain to her what happened, and that I tried to call her, but she won't shut up. She keeps yelling, "That's not your dog!"

   So I yell back, "It's not your dog, either!" Then she yells that she's being paid to take care of it, and she has a license for it, and I didn't have any business putting the brown dog in a pen, and if I want any more dogs, I can get them from the pound, and every time I call them about the dogs, her husband tells her to take them to the pound, and he says I should keep my damned nose out of their business and never set foot on their property again, and I turned her in, and she's coming back in the morning with the sheriff.

   I have no intention of giving her the dog until the owner is informed of what she did, and how she takes care of it. Finally she gives up and storms off into the night. Worried about that sheriff business, I call someone nearby who is on the department to see if I'm in trouble. He says it would probably be a good thing if the sheriff came and saw what was going on over there. I feel a lot better after that.

I try Chloe's owner again and get a busy signal. Guessing the neighbor has beaten me to it, I try again in ten minutes. He verifies that he's just got an irate phone call. I let him know what happened, and that Chloe can stay here if he wants. He hems and haws around and I know he'll be coming after her. He doesn't want to make the Mrs. mad.

   The next day, after Sunday School, the daughter's husband brings him over, and when I see the leash, I know that Chloe is going back to hell. She just spent the night in my basement, with some of her siblings, and I'm sad to see her go. I tell him that now he knows what's going on over there, and if something happens to Chloe, it's all on him. He's making this decision for her, and he knows the risks.

   Chloe left a great many fleas behind in Snoopdog's box. I had put an expensive flea control product on him about two weeks before this, when his rump had turned red, and he was soon back to normal. But this new infestation had turned him red again. The product did its job though, and he got over it. But, poor Chloe has to live with hers!

   So that's the story of the big blowup. It took place on April 19, 2008, and we haven't spoken since.

The Big Blowup

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