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Lost
and Found PAGE
TWO We stopped at our local grocery store and picked up a bag of dry dog food, a plastic squeeze toy in the shape of a bone, and a real bone in the shape of a bone. We pulled up to the house and headed toward the backyard where we had previously secured the dog using a long leash, and where we'd left the formerly-collectible Bauer bowl filled with water, a plate of cat food (it was all we had) and a Danielle Steel novel (my idea, in case it got bored). We were greeted at the side gate by the dog with four inches of its freshly chewed-thru leash hanging from its collar, its mouth forming an "I could have run away if I'd wanted to, but I like you" smile. This is similar to the "I could have slit your throat while you slept, but you're sweet and quirky" grin that you might receive from a friendly stranger the morning after you invited them home from a local bar on a lonesome, drunken night. We would need to take additional security measures while we looked for its owner but hiring an armed guard and electrifying the fence were not within our means, so instead we quickly dog-proofed the garage. Then we arranged a plate of the newly purchased dry dog food and tossed the plastic squeeze toy in the shape of a bone in front of the Found Dog. She sniffed the food, and looked at us with a "Are you kidding me with this? Dry food?" look and pushed the toy bone aside like a seasoned gambler who'd been dealt a lousy hand. Just then the phone rang. With glee I raced to get it, but it was not the Found Dog's owner. It was, however, an answer to an un-uttered prayer. It was a close friend, co-owner of two dogs. She was calling on an important, unrelated matter ("who wants frozen yogurt?"), but when she heard of our plight, she raced over with an extra leash, dog bed, wet food, fiber-filled chew toys that included squeaky sound effects, and lots of advice. After
securing the Found Dog in the garage (or "The G" as we
began to call our improvised, canine version of The Oakwood apartments)
we quickly made up our second batch of "Found Dog" fliers,
this time on the computer, using a large display font (Helvetica,
72 point). This we copied onto bright orange paper. We plastered
them all over, extending our target area to include several major
cross streets, as well as two local dog parks. Then we went home
and waited, watching local investigative reporter Joel Grover report
on dirty bathrooms in fancy restaurants on NBC 4 LA, as late afternoon
became evening. The
next morning, the cell phone started to ring with leads. Bad leads.
Everyone called and reported in their best "good Samaritan"
voices that they knew who Found Dog belonged to, and then each and
every one of these fifteen callers directed us to that distraught
lost dog owner who put up all the "Beautiful Lost Dog"
posters in that local canyon area. Another day, night, and one half of one small tablet of Benadryl passed with still no solid leads. We took pictures of the Found Dog (think: Rolling Stone magazine cover shoot) and created version #3 of our FOUND DOG poster, this time including a large photo with the words "FOUND DOG, " now in HELVETICA 96 point, and a few details plus our phone number. We printed this set on bright green cardstock, plastered them on any poles and walls we had previously missed, then took a trip to three local Humane Society/Dog Pounds to place fliers in the appropriate places. A lovely, hygienically-challenged volunteer at Pound #2 told us that if we brought the Found Dog into the pound, they would photograph it and put it up on their website. This, of course, meant we would have to actually bring the Found Dog to the pound and leave it there for several days. We could pay a fee and they would call us if no owner appeared. But what if there was a mix-up with the paperwork, and they accidentally didn't call, and instead, they, you know, sent it to its final resting place? We couldn't bring ourselves to do this. Even I, a person who finds herself somewhat challenged in the "perfect-love and enthusiastic-admiration of dogs" department couldn't imagine leaving the Found Dog there. We reasoned that if we had been the owners of this dog, this wonderful one-year-old "Liberian Rusky," we wouldn't just check the website of the local pound, but we'd get up off our fat asses (obviously the owner was a bit lazy because, come on, it'd been two days already) and come down to the pound and look for the dog and look through the found dog posters. Plus, if the actual owner were looking on websites, then he'd see our numerous postings all over the previously mentioned lost pet sites. We felt we had it covered, and we were not going to put our Found Dog in any of these dirty, sad animal prisons. Just
as we were returning from the cleanest, happiest of the three dirty,
sad animal prisons, we received a phone call from a local dog walker.
She was sure she'd seen signs in the last few days all over Los
Feliz about a LOST "Liberian Rusky" and she'd seen our
FOUND signs and she was positive it was the same dog. We questioned
her about the "other" lost dog signs, the ones from the
local canyon area, but she assured us she was talking about a different
set of signs and these surely were of our Found Dog.
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We
arrived at one of the "Beautiful Lost Dog" signs, but
upon closer examination of the accompanying photo, we realized the
"Beautiful Lost Dog" in all the signs was not our
Found Dog. Just to be sure, we called the distraught owner of the
"Beautiful Lost Dog," and he described in great detail
his four-year-old dog. Barbara could tell our dog was less than
a year. We kept the "Beautiful Lost Dog" owner's phone
number anyway, just in case it turned out we were wrong, and our
dog's youthful appearance was due to its having been the subject
of a recent Extreme Makeover: Canine Edition on the ABC Family
channel.
