New Year Adventure

2019 started with an early morning dog walk. It was midway through the walk when I received a call from hubby that he was trying to catch a dog that was running across the streets where he was walking our other dog.

I raced home to get the car, grab the keys, put my girl (dog) in the backyard, and took a lead. The dog was not collared, hubby had said, and I was willing to bet not microchipped either.

I found hubby on the corner of a main road with our boy sitting very patiently and the stray wagging her tail in hubby’s arms. She was a beautiful, young, red Kelpie with sagging teats. It took us both to put her into the car and strap her in safely.

At 6:30 in the morning, there weren’t many options available to us. I tried calling the RSPCA, but after 30min, I was still on hold. Meanwhile we brought her to our house where she terrorized our cats and was too scared to play with our big dogs. We couldn’t keep her, but it was also a public holiday and likely not much would be open.

Hubby called a local vet at 7am when they opened, who said they could take her if she was microchipped only. I finally got onto the RSPCA who told me that they didn’t take lost dogs, but they did put us on file as having found her in case the owners called. The Pound wasn’t open on public holidays, but they had metal drop boxes for lost dogs that were checked periodically through the day.

We took her to the vet first. But we were right. No microchip in her. So they told us to take her to the drop boxes or keep her until the owner called the RSPCA.

By this point, I’m so sad for the little girl; it seemed no one wanted her. She was a gorgeous dog with a big smile and constantly wagging upright tail. I swear she was still a puppy, but she wasn’t trained at all. I was pretty certain she was just used to be bred. So a giant part of me just wanted to rescue her from the made-up life I had created in my head.

We drove over to the drop boxes that both the vet and RSPCA told us about, and I was instantly in tears. These metal boxes had very little light in them, were small and cramped, with no water in them. They looked so inhumane. We were lucky that another lady was there before we arrived, and had blocked the entrance in hopes of catching one of the after hours employees as they tried to come into work. And it worked, just as we arrived.

We didn’t have to put the little darling into that horrible box, and we were able to see her be taken straight into the kennels. We left, both sad for her but happy we had hopefully saved a life on New Year’s Day.

Two hours later, the RSPCA called me. The owner was looking for a dog fitting my description.