Bye bye doggie

This has definitely not been a good day.

I was up too late again last night, reading a fantastic book.  It’s called In This House of Brede, by Rumer Godden, and it’s about this woman who had it all in London in the 1960s.  She had a career, she had money, she had the respect of all who worked for her.  But it wasn’t enough… and she joined a convent in the English countryside.  It’s not just about her; it’s mainly more about the convent of Brede and the nuns within.  According to the foreword it’s one of the truest portrayals of life in a modern convent in English literature.  Not being Catholic, I find it all quite fascinating.

I’ve been to mass once.  My friend David is Catholic, and he took me to mass with him ten years ago when I went to Chicago for a scholarship competition.  That’s the last time I’ve been in a Catholic church, though.

So this morning when I woke up I was really tired.  I rolled out of bed finally, and as soon as I did so, the dog began to beg to go outside.  He’s been wetting a bit in the dining room lately, so I try to be on top of his needs and let him out at the first signs that he needs to go.  He went outside, and I stumbled back into Grace’s room to get her out of her crib.

That was at 9am.

By 10am I finally realized Koolit had never asked to come inside.  I went out to look in the backyard, and he was gone.

I raced back inside to throw clothes on both Grace and me, and we went traipsing along through the spaces between everyone’s backyards.  We called and called, and couldn’t find him.  I came back home and went looking for him in the van.  Still no luck.

Koolit didn’t have his tags on.  I’d taken his collar off a couple of nights ago to brush some baby powder through his fur.  I hadn’t gotten around to putting them back on.  They wouldn’t have helped either.  His tags don’t list our current phone numbers, but at least someone would know he belongs to someone.

I was starting to get really upset.  Koolit means a lot to me.  He’s my companion when Kurt’s out to sea.  He sleeps with me after Kurt leaves to go to work.  He seems to sense when he’s upset and he’ll cuddle with me.  He’s a good dog.  We’ve had him for seven, almost eight years now, and he’s an old dog, probably 12 by now.  I would hate for something to happen to him.

Kurt came home from work to get lunch, and we went out to look some more.  He’d called the property manager to tell her that we lost our dog, and she said she thought she saw him around 10:30am near one of the base’s gates.   We went over to where she thought she saw him, but no luck.  We just kept driving around and around and asking anyone who was out if they’d seen our dog.

Finally the animal league called us to tell us someone had brought Koolit in to them!!  Joy of joys!!!  He’d been there since 10:30am or so, which means he must have been picked up right after the property manager saw him.

We picked him up, and now he’s home, but boy, was that scary.  Now we have to go to Home Depot tonight so we can fix the holes in the fence.  I had mentioned maybe getting a tie-out line for him to use when he has to go potty, but since we have a fence, we’re not allowed to tie him out.  I can understand the theory behind it, but it’s frustrating at the same time.  I wouldn’t leave my dog outside for days at a time, but I don’t want to spend a gazillion dollars on getting a new fence to keep him in.  We don’t even own this house.  The property people won’t fix the fences; that’s on us.

The property manager came by to see that Koolit was indeed home safely.  That’s how she found out we have three animals.  My two cats started sniffing around her ankles at the same time.  Oops.  But she told me she’s not going to evict me for having one animal too many since they’re both cats.

Good to know.

While she was here, the property manager told us of another dog at the animal league who is from military housing.  Apparently the owners of this dog, a small little cocker spaniel, took him over to the animal league saying he wasn’t theirs.  Now they’re abandoning him there!  When the animal league calls them, the owner simply hangs up on them.  And when the property manager called, the woman denied being the owner until the property manager told her who was calling.  She thought it was the animal league again!  The manager informed her that she knows it’s her dog; she meets all the animals that live in housing.  She still denies that it’s her dog, but the manager has given her till tomorrow to go down to the animal league to relinquish ownership.  The league has people wanting to adopt this dog.

I just can’t understand how someone can abandon his dog.  How do you turn your back on an animal you’ve agreed to raise and care for?  How do you turn your back on a helpless animal, an animal that can’t make it on his own?  Dogs need us to take care of them.  Yes, there are some feral dogs out there, but it’s not a good life for a dog.

Catie over at Catiecake referred to the owners as “asshole fuckwads.”  I don’t think I could have described them any better.