Ooooohh, She's a LIttle Runaway

My girls around Christmas time when they were much younger.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Well. I have one more day to get through at work, and then I get 4 days off. Yea! Today I will use an old blog post from the first year I started this, 10 years ago. It's about running outside at Christmas time and adorable, naughty pets. Enjoy:

Winter makes running so much more interesting. Besides the fact that I have to wear about 50 layers when it's cold, it's almost always dark out by the time I go running after work and I can't see very well in the dark. One night last month while I was running, a cat came up to me on the sidewalk right off of a driveway and meowed. I meowed back and we had a little conversation. I looked up and a woman who I assume was the owner of the cat was standing on the other side of her minivan looking extremely concerned (what? WHAT?!).

On Saturday I had another encounter with someone else's pet while I was running. I was nearing the top of that hill on Rochester Street when this cute teenaged dog came running almost right into me. She didn't attack me, she just wanted some attention. She was the sweetest Viszla and so I stopped and looked at her collar to see if there was an address from that neighborhood where I could take her home. I found an AKC tag and another tag with her name, Kimball and a phone number with an area code that I couldn't place. I figured I'd try to keep running to see if she would go home but she just kept following me.

She had no concept of cars or traffic or death, evidently and she would just run into the middle of the street when she heard or saw something that interested her. I tried to yell at her and sometimes she would listen and sometimes she wouldn't. After all, I wasn't the boss of her. All the cars that almost hit her, stopped and gave me those awful shaming looks and rolled eyes through their car windows because they thought I was her owner. One car even stopped and rolled down their window so I could defend myself. They were sympathetic and we were all at a loss as to what to do. So, they drove on and I tried to run in more residential streets with less traffic. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore, and I stopped and grabbed her collar and walked her to my house the 5 or 6 blocks left. She was so sad that she couldn't run around and play in the traffic.

When I got home with her, I called the number which got me to someone in Oregon. She gave me the owner's address and phone number in Iowa City. I called them and got their voice mail. I drove to their house with the dog because I thought maybe they were in the neighborhood somewhere looking for her. No one was home. We went back home and I tried calling again. Kimball parked herself at Stinky's feet because Stinky was eating tortilla chips and the snack dust was raining down all around her.

I had to pick Coadster up at her friend's swim meet and then we were going to be gone most of the day, so I called one more time with no answer. Then I had to call the animal shelter. I felt like shit taking her there but I'm not allowed to have a dog in my apartment and I didn't know when we'd be back. I left one last message at Kimball's owner's house to let them know where she was and gave the animal shelter all her info when they came for her.

When we got back we had four voice mail messages from Kimball's owners. First they were still looking for her then they called to tell me the animal shelter called them and then later that night they called and thanked me and offered me money for taking care of her. I think they were just happy nobody stole her because she was so damn cute.