Not a Dog's Life

(She looks like this) (Not counting gender)

So today I was headed out around the Little Lakes, looking forward to a long walk and a couple of hours of absolute quiet, when I heard the most terrible yelping up ahead. I hoped that it could be attributed to a dog or two whose owners had stopped to talk and created a minor civil war, but within a few minutes a woman approached me, gestured backward, and asked hopefully whether I had tied my dog to a tree and left it there temporarily. I guess I look like a total idiot, but whatever.

So we went on a few steps to the spot where she had encountered a perfectly beautiful beagle/lab ~ a healthy, well-fed dog tied to a tree, who had started to cry piteously when she walked by. We talked for a few moments about whether someone might have actually left the dog there while she finished a run or, I don't know, jumped into the lake (no, no one does that, but I guess optimism is not a bad thing). I said that I would be back around in an hour or so and, if the dog were still there, I'd pick her up.

We walked on and a second woman approached us and said, "Please tell me there isn't a beagle/lab mix back there tied up and abandoned." We backtracked and she said a sad, "Yep." She had seen a well-dressed (heels, manicure, make-up, definitely not one of the three of us) woman get out of her car with the dog, disappear into the woods, reappear sans dog, get into her car, and drive away.

The second woman was accompanied by her own dog, whom she had acquired in just this way, and she was willing to consider taking our new friend, if her own dog, abused in his past life and still leery after many years with her, responded in a positive manner. We tried walking the two dogs together and things were looking up, but the newly homeless pup struggled mightily when we tried to put her into the woman's hatchback, and leaped out immediately. ("She'd probably been locked in a trunk," said my daughter later, when I called for commiseration from Oregon.

So the dog and I ended up making a little trip to the police station (she was willing to get into the back seat of my car), the repository for dogs abandoned on the week-end. She was strong and apparently recently pregnant ~ no doubt yet another "cute puppy" who grew up and needed to be trained to a leash and spayed and otherwise actually cared for by people who did not know how or want to learn to take responsibility for her as she grew to adulthood.

I am SICK of this. Just sick of it. She is the third dog I have encountered this summer who needed to be "rescued." (And that doesn't count the kitten I found in the cemetery, whose plight engaged five or six people before he was settled.) I could go on and on and on, but I will just say that this beautiful little dog represents the foundation of what is practically a religious doctrine in this house with respect to where one should acquire a pet (a pound or a shelter) and what one should do with said pet the next morning (put a complete end to its reproductive capacity).

Well, that's my soapbox for the week-end. I know that my friends all provide good homes for their pets, and that many of them prefer reputable breeders to the streets as sources for same. (The Lovely Daughter, the expert in the house, states unequivocally that the frequently-made argument that well-bred animals are more predictable in behavior is utterly without foundation.) I just know that I have spent the afternoon delivering a beautiful dog to her doom, and I try to believe that the Lovely Daughter's volunteer work at Friends for Felines compensates in some small way.