Dog Heroes!!

We were celebrating Cynthia’s birthday on Saturday with a spirited round of drinking and board games. Cynthia and Steffi hosted and around 1:30 we were spent from Apples to Apples (featuring a truly awesome argument why “Screeching” was the only possible choice for “Natural” by Megan) so Gabe, Megan, Matt, Ginny, Robin, Knut and I headed out the door in a big herd.

Outside, about a half a block from the apartment, we saw a man sitting on the curb and a black labrador wandering on the street. We just assumed the guy owned the dog, but he asked us if we knew her and explained she was blind. He was outside half a hour previous and saw her and now he was nervous.

The dog didn’t look too old and she was plump and silky despite a few bare patches, but there was clearly something wrong with her. She did not have a collar. She was wandering aimlessly in a little circle in the middle of the street, shying at shadows and manhole covers. The guy, Kirk, explained that he has called animal control, but they wouldn’t be in until seven the next morning. What could we do with her in the mean time?

She was a sweet dog. She gratefully accepted our petting and sat politely on the pavement when asked. While we petted her, Gabe got out her phone and rang Cynthia. Cynthia gamely agreed to let the dog stay in her backyard until animal control could pick her up. Now we just had to get a sweet blind dog to walk up the street, into an alley, and into a strange backyard.

Matt walked with her, holding a hand on each side of her body to guide her. The rest of us walked on all sides to help steer her and encouraged her with whistles and frequent exclamations of “Good Girl!” We got her into the tiny backyard and went home—where we promptly worried about her all night. We were afraid someone had taken off her collar and dumped her in a nice neighborhood.

Then on Sunday, I received these emails:

From Cynthia:

so in case any of you are curious as to what happened to our canine
friend -- as luck would have it, she's actually back with her owner!

apparently she belongs to one of my neighbors, who heard her barking in
the middle of the night. he had been looking for her and was worried
(apparently she just went blind two days ago), and thought the barking
sounded familiar so he followed the sound to my backyard, hopped the
fence, and took her home (probably just a couple of hours after we put
her there). luckily i had left a note to the other tenants in my
building which included my name and phone number, so he was able to call
me this morning to let me know what happened. i'm glad i was still
asleep when he called -- i would have been really perplexed if i'd woken
up and found that she wasn't there. anyway, he sounded like a nice guy
and said he really appreciated us having kept watch over her.

sadly, due to a mixture of grogginess and surprise, it didn't occur to
me to ask him the dog's name until after i'd hung up the phone. but
it's nice to know there's a happy ending to the story. thanks for
spearheading the rescue mission! i'm really glad everything worked out
the way it did.

And then this one from Kirk:

Hi all.

Thank you SO much for your compassionate assistance with the dog last night. In a bizarre twist, it turns out I know the dog and her owner, though the dog was unrecognizable to me last night. Last I'd seen her, she was in perfect health, ten pounds lighter, fully sighted, and totally sprightly ... so I couldn't imagine that we were dealing with the same dog last night.

Her name is Shadow, and she's only six years old, but due to illness she's gone blind and aged a great deal in the last month and a half. I visited her owner today, and she's back in their care. Her owner is incredibly attentive to her, so she'll get great care, but without the small team we had last night, I'm pretty sure things would have gone a great deal worse. [Her owner] was overjoyed that we had all taken time out to bring Shadow in, and out of harm's way.

Cynthia, thanks so much for putting Shadow up for the night. Apparently she heard her owner's car and barked, and they heard her and took it from there.

So here’s my appreciation to the Dog Heroes: Cynthia, Matt, Gabe, Robin, Megan, Ginny, and Kirk!