Doggy dramas.

You know it's been so long since I didn't have a deadline for something looming that I almost don't know what to do with myself now! I mean - I still have things to do, obviously, but nothing that urgently needs to get done today, or this week even. (Well - except for laundry and cleaning.)

Sylvia's Christmas party was fun, and hilarious, and when I got home I stayed up into the wee hours reading fiction JUST BECAUSE I COULD!! Very exciting. I had a looong sleep in the next morning and a late, leisurely breakfast. I went over to Jelena's in the afternoon and we walked up to this huge second-hand bookshop, and I dared to spend $2.50 on a book, despite my current poverty levels. ;-) It was a nice way to spend a few hours... but it was on the walk home that the adventures began!

There's some pretty nice areas around, so we were walking along admiring the cactus gardens and deciding which houses we'd want to live in if we weren't pathetically poor students, and occasionally a dog-walker would go by and I'd admire their mutts. (One lady had a GORGEOUS Tibetan spaniel! So cool!)
Anyway, after a while we noticed a little pitbull, still only a pup really, had appeared out of nowhere and was following us. He seemed friendly and healthy enough (although had tail and ears cropped - how can people DO that?) and had a collar on - but no ID tags. He followed us for several blocks, running around and jumping up to lick our hands occasionally. Then just as we were getting close to J's place and wondering if the dog was going to follow us all the way, the twitty bloody thing ran into the street! (We were walking along a fairly major road and the traffic goes fast there!)

So there's some traffic screeching to a halt, and the dog actually got hit, albeit not seriously, by one of the cars. We grabbed it as it (finally) ran off the street. Poor little bugger was a bit shaky, but didn't appear hurt. (The car just drove off. Sigh.)

So a guy who was jogging past and a lady in one of the houses nearby came out and no-one knew who the dog belonged to or what to do with it so the damn thing wouldn't get itself killed. The lady was leaving, but she gave us a leash to put him on, and the jogger guy said that he could probably take the dog back to his place and he and his wife could take it to a shelter or something. Except as soon as he tried to walk off with it, and it realised that we were going in the other direction, it started pulling the other way and the leash snapped! It ran straight back to us - I guess we'd been adopted. (Also, it was initially a little nervy around the guy - wonder what that says about its - presumably male - owner?)

We tried calling Animal Control. They couldn't find a local number. We called the Humane Society. They won't come get an animal, but you can drop one off - for a fee of $25!!! We called the pound, eventually and they said they'd send a car around. So J and I sat on the sidewalk with the dog and waited. And waited.

We were there an hour, as it got dark and bloody cold (especially sitting on cold cement!) and I had the dog in my lap by this stage. Jelena called back. They denied that they'd ever promised to send anyone, seemed surprised that we'd waited, and said that there was no guarantee that anyone would make it out there that night at all!!

So, we really didn't know what to do. Neither of us has a car, or lives anywhere that we could take the dog, and we were still worried about it near a main road since it manifestly was young and silly and had no road sense. But we also had no leash, and while it was a lovely, friendly animal, and remarkably patient under the circumstances, we could only hold onto it for so long. In the end I used my scarf as a bit of a leash and we just led it away from the main road into some quieter streets and let it go, and just had to hope it could make its way home, or at least wander into someone's yard who could look aftr it.

So, after that little adventure, we were FREEZING. J had to lend me a jacket, and we went and had burritos and coffee and began to feel human again.

Oh and THEN? The bloody pound people called to say "We've got someone at the streetcorner now - where are you?" Useless bastards.