I stopped in at our vetrinarian's office this morning, to find out some information about the appointment we have there tomorrow. While I was there, I glanced at the bulletin board and noticed some flyers of "Lost Pets", I pointed out each picture to our youngest daughter and mentioned how sad that these families could not find their dog. We left the vet and planned to run errands, but I realized we had forgotten one of the returns I needed, so we turned for home a few blocks away. After we were in the car driving out to do the errands again, I noticed a large Golden Retriever wandering down the road. It struck me as odd to see the way it seemed to meander, so I slowed down and called to it out my window. The dog stopped looked at me, wagged once and took a step toward the car. It worth a try so I parked, got out and called the dog to me, it seemed shy but came after some coaxing. I thought maybe it belonged to a neighbor but no one answered their door nearby. After calling the Humane Society and finding them still closed that early... I decided to take the dog to our house and call the Animal Control dispatch to pick it up. I made a make shift leash and loaded it into our van, it was a very calm and sweet and climbed in like it was our own pet! While driving I recalled the stop over at the vet and vaguely remembered one of the "Lost Dogs" was a Golden Retriever. I took a chance, called the Vet and got the phone number of the searching owner. I left the "found dog" in the kennel area of our own yard, to go finish my errands, while I waited for the owner to call us. I decided to let them come see if the dog was theirs before taking it to the Humane Society. Finally, after speaking to the women, we arranged to meet on our street and let her take a look at the dog I found.
Her dog was a male, w/ a green collar, and jumped their fence several miles away from where we live... this dog was shy, it would not let me check it's gender... (which was okay with me too), and this dog had only a choke chain. I was pretty sure this was not her lost pet, but thought it was worth a try. When she finally drove up, she slowed to a stop, and before she even put it in park she blurted out with tears in her eyes, "I can't believe it! You found my dog!!" I was so surprised, and thought maybe she had made mistake herself, maybe wishing it was true, since it just seemed so odd that it would work out so amazingly. She opened her car door and the dog wagged it's tail and climbed up into her lap!! No small feat for a dog as big as this guy! And a big guy he was, named "Phineus", he was scared of the hot air balloons on the morning of the "Balloon Rally" we blogged about in January! He had been lost for 6 1/2 weeks!! It seems another family found him, took him in, and he must have escaped from their yard as well! Evident because he wasn't starving and not as dirty as a true stray would have been. And of course, he was missing his own green collar and had a choke chain in it's place. The woman called her husband crying and said "I found your dog! I knew it was him as soon as I saw his tail end!!" LOL.
I keep thinking how amazing and coincidental this is, I just happened to stop at the vet a day early, the bulletin board there caught my eye, then I happened to forget a return and had to drive through our neighborhood again... crazy. Oh, the photo above is not of the dog I found, just a look alike :-)
What a happy ending!!
