harboring a fugitive

i found a seemingly lost dog this morning ... she was hanging out in the middle of the street in front of our house. she had no intention of moving out of the way as a car came down the street so i called her over to our garage where i fed her and gave her some water.

she had a nice collar and doggie tags. however, the phone number on the tags was disconnected! she was from the next town over, according to her license, so i didn't know where to start looking for her owners. i secured our new little friend in the side yard ... poor lola ... she really wanted to play with "sadie," but i kept them separated in case she was diseased.

i spent the better part of the next hour talking to the oxnard pound, licensing department, camarillo dog pound, robin, joe and kristine ... had to come up with a plan to get this dog home!

i reluctently arranged for the pound to come pick her up. robin told me how to adopt her later if needed and take her to a shelter that doesn't destroy dogs. whew! (okay, we probably would have kept her at that point.) so, lola, the fugitive and i waited for the dog catcher. during the wait i wrote a note to the owners, with the pound address, phone number and hours ... i figured i could drop that by their house so they would know where to start looking for their dog.

mr. dog catcher turned up around noon. right behind him was a guy asking what kind of dog was being picked up. i told him a black lab and he exclaimed, "that's my dog!" turns out, he's our relatively new neighbor ... sadie got out this morning and they couldn't find her. he hadn't updated her tags since the move, hence the disconnected phone number!

so, sadie went home. i asked the guy to go directly to petsmart for new tags! if she'd had a good number on her tags she would have been home in seconds this morning!