Got up this morning to find a couple of strange dogs wandering around our yard and barn. Mr. S went out to try to shoo them away, but they were very friendly and came right up to him, tails wagging. They are a white bull terrier-looking dog (with collar and no tags) and a smallish brown/black shepherd-looking dog (no collar). Both have slight injuries in their noses/ears/legs, as if they have been fighting, whether with other animals or each other I have no idea, though they seem to get along.
We called the vet, and he knew nothing about missing dogs. Next try was Mr. S’s brother next door (about 1/4 mile up the road), who said that it sounded like the people who are living in the Bumpus house on the other side of him.
. . .
Oh, the Bumpus house. I’ve written about its occupants before. There was the extended family whose diapered children frequently played in the gravel at the end of the driveway, unsupervised, while cars whizzed by on our rural road at 55+ mph. Whose dogs frequently wandered into our yard to torment our dogs.
They were finally foreclosed on and moved out, and the house has been for sale since then. For about a year the house was occupied, presumably by renters, from whom we never heard a peep. They seemed like nice people and took good care of the place from what we could tell.
But now they’re gone and the place seem to be occupied by some guys who may be doing further work on the place (it’s still for sale), and presumably that’s whose dogs these are.
. . .
So Mr. S drove up the road to tell these people to come get their dogs. Nobody home. Nobody home and their dogs are running around loose with no tags. Great.
By then I had managed to coax both of them into our dog kennels, but not before the brown one had snapped at Mr. S’s gloved hand (he had allowed Mr. S to pet him before). Not good either.
So then we called the sheriff’s department, who had us call the local pound. He said they would have to verify whether the dogs are vaccinated and licensed (I’m gonna guess not), and the owners will probably have to pay a hefty fee to get them back. They said it’s often a wake-up call to owners that they can’t just let their dogs run around loose.
The guy from the pound just showed up and collected the dogs. I asked whether the owners would know who turned their dogs over to the pound, and he said yes, they would fill out the bottom of the form with our information. Not too happy about that; we sometimes leave our dogs in their kennel if we’re gone all day, so they can do their business, and I wouldn’t want some angry yahoo messing with them. So we’ll be keeping them inside for a while. Good thing it’s after the holidays and we’re done being out and about.
. . .
And now the pound guy’s truck just whizzed back past our house after going to check on the house where these dogs supposedly belong, so I’m guessing that there was still no one home. So off the the pound they go, I guess.
I’m still more than a little uneasy. I have nothing against bull terriers (and that one seemed to be the nicer of the two), but I know what kind of owners they can attract. Plus the fact that these dogs had obviously gotten into some kind of minor scrapping, enough to draw blood . . . And I understand about escape artists – we’ve had a few ourselves – but this just doesn’t feel right.
It would be nice if the dogs get back home safely (I’d be beside myself if they ended up being put down) and their owners take the lesson to heart, and perhaps are grateful that we caught their dogs for them instead of leaving them to be hit by a car or worse. But knowing the state of mankind these days . . .
Wish us (and the poor puppies) luck.
) there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.