My Morning

[clearbluevinyl]

So I get up to walk Maggie, as I normally do. We head out and I have a game I play when I arrive at certain intersections. There is some construction over by City Hall that prohibits me from using the sidewalk I usually use when I take Maggie on our 45-60 minute walk each morning. The game I play is that I have two intersections to get me past that sidewalk area and still allow us to go my "normal" route (which is one big circle up a hill), and if I miss one or both of those "walk" intersections, then I skip my normal route and use a main street up the hill farther to get her excersize in. That doesn't make much sense, but I can't explain it any other way. The point is, this morning, neither "walk" sign was on in the correct direction, so I took the major street up the hill, rather than going around in my normal circle. Things were going fine until we started on our way back down. We hit the corner of Angeleno (my street only like 7 blocks up the hill) and all of a sudden this Jack Russell Terrier comes bolting across the street and he and Maggie sniff each other. I look to the other side of the street with a little disdain, just because the dog is not on a leash and could easily have been hit by a car. The group of businessmen gathered in front of a house just shrug their shoulders at me. After the sniff-fest, Maggie and I start to leave and the dog follows us. I look back at the businessmen who are not paying attention, and shrug, thinking that they have their dog under control, maybe this is what he does. He follows us for like a half block, going in and out of yards like they're his. Then he gets it in his head to run across the street. There is a woman standing there, who I thought I recognized from the businessmen group, and so I assume she's the owner. The dog sprints across the street just as a car zooms in the opposite direction. The car missed the dog by the tiniest bit imaginable, and I was really upset, I couldn't believe the owner would be so neglectful to allow her dog to risk getting killed. The dog jumps ont he woman and then runs back to me. She asks if the dog is mine, I say he's not. I ask if it's hers, she says she's never seen him before. The girl driving the car (who was very nice to do this) jumped out of her car and asked if the dog was alright. I said he looked fine, and she got back in her car and drove away. I looked on the dog's collar (thank HEAVENS he had a collar) and found the address and the phone number of the owner. Since the crappy dog didn't listen to me (his name was Jack) and didn't have a leash, I had to carry a squirmy, strange dog around the neighborhood looking for the house. And I could only hold him with one arm because I had to hold Maggie's leash in one hand, and she sometimes is not the most obedient of dogs either, so she was kind of freaking out too. So I carry Jack over to the businessman group, asking if he's their dog. They say no, he came from THAT direction (insert nondescript pointing in vague direction here), and continue their (now kind of shady) business talk in front of a random house. I check the address and knock on a door. A quiet asian man (who didn't understand me the first couple of times I asked) answers the door and finally communicates to me that it is not his dog. This is only after the dog runs into the guy's house and we have to chase him out. I grab the squirmy dog again, and sit on the street, calling the number listed on the tag. I get voicemail, but her fucking box is full. I am very angry at this point, just because what kind of fucking crappy owner loses their dog, is most likely not looking for it, and has the audacity to have a full voicemail box at the same time. In my frustration, Jack gets away from me, runs across the street AGAIN and succeeds in narrowly missing getting killed by another car. I'm like screaming at the dog and the car, and there was a very nice latina woman and her daughter walking on the other side of the street, and I yell for them to stop the dog. They succeed, and I grab the dog, thanking them profusely. They were very nice. So I check the collar again, and realize I had the wrong address in the first place. Ooops. So I find the right house and ring the bell. No answer. Meanwhile, I had called Nate and left a message because I didn't know what to do if I couldn't find the owner. I didn't really want to bring Jack to the pound, but I knew that's what I most likely should do. As I sit on the stoop still holding the squirming dog, and with Maggie kind of unhappy about the whole situation, my phone rings. I stupidly answer it, but in my defense it was a 630 area code, and I have several calls out to that area code, all of which are important. So I answer, and it's one of the important calls, and in the middle of that conversation, the front door of the house opens. I hastily (but politely) hang up with said important call (feeling very unprofessional and stupid and hoping that I hung up in such a way that the person will not hate me), and after the woman says "oh my god" I ask if Jack is hers. She asys yes. I get a good look at her, see she is half asleep and has a baby in her arms. Super. So I say that he was running around, sans leash, and almost got hit by two cars so "could you please make sure is he secure in your yard/house so he doesn't get KILLED?" I don't know if she was mad or happy or what, but she opened the door for Jack, and he didn't want to go in. I didn't really give this much thought til afterwards, but we had to basically push him in the house and close the door quickly. If I hadn't been distracted by said phone call or the fact that Nate was calling every two seconds because I had left a panicked message on his voicemail, I would have maybe said something else. Like asked if she needed help with Jack or something. But then again, that might have possibly been very rude. So I walked away, returned my important call, and spoke with Nate, who thought that Maggie had bit someone or something, since I was so panicked. He was freaked out but calmed when I explained what happend. He thought that I was overreacting a little to this woman who sucks at taking care of a dog and a baby... so yeah. Then I was upset my whole walk home wondering if she abuses the dog and if I helped him go back to the place he was trying to escape from. And I got super mad and thought about going back there and taking the dog and making it my dog, but that was a fleeting angry thought. For real, though? I mean, I know you have a baby and I'm sure you're very tired, but how exactly does your dog escape from your home without your knowledge? If you can't be responsible for more than one living thing (that includes yourself and not just a baby or an animal) you should not have another living thing. And I'm not saying I'm perfect, because there was definitely a ton of learning on my part to take care of Maggie, but I choose to be responsible with her and for her, even if it means getting up over an hour before I normally would have to and excersizing (oh excersize how I abhor you) every morning.

Anyway, I was really mad and now I'm only a little mad. So rant for you today. Happy Thursday.

This is yet another reason why I want to rescue all the animals and have a big menagerie. On my huge tracts o land.

GAH.