Huckle

This was going to be a really depressing post.

We found a great little dog as we were walking Sammy late last night. Huckle (that's what he looked like to me) loved Sammy, which is how we were able to entice him home with us. Since it was too late to do anything about him, we fed him a little and made him a bed in the kitchen. He was clearly used to more personal sleeping arrangements, so he eventually ended up in the bedroom. He was cute, friendly, springy (all night) and apparently young. Sammy really liked him. The cats were pissed.

This morning I went to the vet to see if he was chipped. No luck. I stopped at a few groomers in the area, and no one recognized him (though I got a pretty fair idea of the competition between West Seattle groomers based on where they thought he'd been groomed). I made up some notices and copied off 100. I was sick thinking about how frantic his owners must be, and even sicker thinking about taking him to the animal shelter. Although it gave him the best chance of being reunited with his owner, the whole 3 day time limit makes me ill. But we clearly couldn't keep him either.

After spending about an hour driving around, posting signs, and feeling more certain that the wind and sideways rain would get to the signs before Huckle's owner, I was about to give up and go home. Ray called to say that a guy Mike saw the signs, and believed the dog must have escaped right after he and his son had gotten home from a funeral last night. They live just 2 short blocks away.

I pulled up in front of the house a few minutes later, and Mike came charging out. He was beyond relieved. Mike had just gotten done copying off signs of his own when he saw the one I posted. We laughed that we could've had this whole thing straightened out earlier had we just run into each other at Staples.

Anyway, Huckle (his real name is Romeo) made me realize that as chaotic as our household is, the delicate pet balance is just about right.