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So my sweetie and I were on our way up to a meeting, and since traffic was stopped dead on I-84 I decided to take surface streets through Hartford. Well, just over the Bloomfield line, nearly at the highway again when we saw a dog wander out into the middle of the road.
It had a collar with a leash hanging off it, but no one around who appeared they should be at the other end of the leash. I stopped in the road blocking other traffic from the dog, and my sweetie leapt out and got the dog to come over so she could grab the leash.
I pulled over and we looked the dog over. Some pit-bull/boxer, some dalmatian, probably a bit of something else. White with some tiny black spots around the nose. Collar and leash, no tags. Healthy, happy and friendly. In short order it was clear he was deaf (or nearly so) and had no training (liked to lunge & drag).
Some other people stopped, apparently they'd followed the dog (by car) for several blocks, from the north end of Hartford. They were too scared to try and catch it though. The gentleman in the car called the Bloomfield police to come pick it up.
We hung out for about 40 minutes waiting for the police to show. The dog exploring and being generally lovable. We got him a cup of water from a beauty parlor, which he slurped up.
When the police finally arrived, the officer told me the dog would go to the pound and if the owner couldn't be found he'd be put down. When I pressed him for options he suggested the humane society. So we packed the dog into the back seat of Emily and drove three towns south to the humane society. Upon arrival we found they were closed. While standing outside talking on the phone with a friend about options, an employee came by and told me they wouldn't be able to take the dog anyway. And I had to bring him to animal control in whatever town, and if they couldn't find the owner in two weeks the dog would go to the humane society (assuming he was friendly, which he clearly was).
So we drove home with the dog once again lounging in Emily's back seat, and when we got home I called Hartford, Bloomfield & West Hartford animal controls, and got a raft of answering machines. I eventually got in touch with someone in Bloomfield, who told me I could bring the dog to their police station and they'd get it to animal control. Moments after hanging up the phone with them, Hartford animal control called me back. The gentleman I spoke with told me I should probably bring it to Bloomfield, but he took down a complete description of the dog in case someone called him looking for it.
About halfway to Bloomfield PD the gentleman from Hartford animal control called us back, turns out he'd just received a call looking for a dog of the same description as the one we had in the back seat. So we met him, and the owners. The owner was an older woman who was... a bit mad. But in a friendly way. She tried to give us a reward, and we told her the reward we wanted was for her to go out the next day and get a tag with her name & number, and get the dog to a vet for a checkup and get it some training. It took a while to extract ourselves from her thanks. I hope our requests, and her promises of tags, etc. stick. Though the animal control officer took down her contact info and said something to her as I was walking away about checking in on the dog in a few weeks to see that it has gotten licensed, tagged and been to a vet.
All in all we spent about 2.5 hours with "Storm", as we found his name to be, who was a wonderful dog, and I hope for the best for him.
Though it meant we missed the meeting for the third month running.
It had a collar with a leash hanging off it, but no one around who appeared they should be at the other end of the leash. I stopped in the road blocking other traffic from the dog, and my sweetie leapt out and got the dog to come over so she could grab the leash.
I pulled over and we looked the dog over. Some pit-bull/boxer, some dalmatian, probably a bit of something else. White with some tiny black spots around the nose. Collar and leash, no tags. Healthy, happy and friendly. In short order it was clear he was deaf (or nearly so) and had no training (liked to lunge & drag).
Some other people stopped, apparently they'd followed the dog (by car) for several blocks, from the north end of Hartford. They were too scared to try and catch it though. The gentleman in the car called the Bloomfield police to come pick it up.
We hung out for about 40 minutes waiting for the police to show. The dog exploring and being generally lovable. We got him a cup of water from a beauty parlor, which he slurped up.
When the police finally arrived, the officer told me the dog would go to the pound and if the owner couldn't be found he'd be put down. When I pressed him for options he suggested the humane society. So we packed the dog into the back seat of Emily and drove three towns south to the humane society. Upon arrival we found they were closed. While standing outside talking on the phone with a friend about options, an employee came by and told me they wouldn't be able to take the dog anyway. And I had to bring him to animal control in whatever town, and if they couldn't find the owner in two weeks the dog would go to the humane society (assuming he was friendly, which he clearly was).
So we drove home with the dog once again lounging in Emily's back seat, and when we got home I called Hartford, Bloomfield & West Hartford animal controls, and got a raft of answering machines. I eventually got in touch with someone in Bloomfield, who told me I could bring the dog to their police station and they'd get it to animal control. Moments after hanging up the phone with them, Hartford animal control called me back. The gentleman I spoke with told me I should probably bring it to Bloomfield, but he took down a complete description of the dog in case someone called him looking for it.
About halfway to Bloomfield PD the gentleman from Hartford animal control called us back, turns out he'd just received a call looking for a dog of the same description as the one we had in the back seat. So we met him, and the owners. The owner was an older woman who was... a bit mad. But in a friendly way. She tried to give us a reward, and we told her the reward we wanted was for her to go out the next day and get a tag with her name & number, and get the dog to a vet for a checkup and get it some training. It took a while to extract ourselves from her thanks. I hope our requests, and her promises of tags, etc. stick. Though the animal control officer took down her contact info and said something to her as I was walking away about checking in on the dog in a few weeks to see that it has gotten licensed, tagged and been to a vet.
All in all we spent about 2.5 hours with "Storm", as we found his name to be, who was a wonderful dog, and I hope for the best for him.
Though it meant we missed the meeting for the third month running.
