On Thanksgiving night, just as "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" was really getting good, I heard my dog Puck freaking out over something in the backyard. I figured it was just a cat, or maybe a squirrel who'd stayed up late, so I let him out the back door to chase it off (It is his yard, after all). I was shocked to see that it wasn't a cat, or a squirrel, but a black puppy, who had somehow gotten into our fenced-in backyard. She and Puck got along great, chasing each other around the yard, as theories about where she'd come from bounced around our inebriated crowd. She had no collar, but she wasn't all dirty and smelly, so we figured she'd just escaped from someone's backyard. Then again, maybe she'd been dumped? My wife Brooke was instantly smitten, and wanted to keep her. but I thought she had to belong to someone, and that we shouldn't get too attached. A few minutes later, she squeezed though a hole in our backyard fence, no doubt the same way she'd gotten in, and took off down the alley, toward her (hopefully) rightful home. I followed her for awhile, but lost her in the blackness.
The next day, I was walking down an alley a couple streets over and I ran into one of my neighbors...he asked if I was the owner of a black lab puppy. I said no, but told him my story of the night before...apparently the pup went to his house after I lost her in the alley, and he took her in and kept her for the night, planning to put up posters and try to locate her owners, if she had any, the next day. I told him that if nobody came forth to claim her, we'd take her on.
Now its a couple days later, and I guess she's our new dog. We named her Betty, and she's doing very well. We're still looking for her owners, but it's been a week and we've heard nothing, so it looks like she'll be with us for a while. She's smart, but a bit wild, and is a pretty determined little escape artist, so we're gonna get her some training and try to break her of these bad habits. You gotta love her, though...she's cute as a bug!
