When Leah and I were driving home from the grocery store on Saturday a dog was running in the middle of Huffaker Road. We stopped and eventually coaxed him to us. It was a small-to-medium-sized, black and white male, probably a pitt or pitt mix. He was just on the edge of maturity with a lot of puppy left in him — so much puppy, in fact, that he peed on my shoe.

He was such a frantically energetic dog that we decided we couldn’t take him home to terrorize the cats, plus we had no way to keep him out of the weather outside. So Leah took our groceries home and I stayed with the dog, trying to call some contacts with rescue groups. I used my belt as a leash; clearly the dog had never been on a leash.

I called three rescue contacts plus a neighbor. The neighbor couldn’t help because they had just taken in another stray to add to their large pack. The rescue contacts recommended taking him to the pound. In the past that would have been an almost certain death sentence, but these days the rescue groups are saving almost 100 percent of the unclaimed dogs at our local pound. I had already called the pound four times with no answer before one of the rescuers I called told me they don’t answer the phone on weekends.

I didn’t want to take the dog in our car, but Leah is not comfortable driving our big truck. So she came back with the car. I rode in the back seat with the dog. This was an excited dog. When it wasn’t licking my face it was chewing on my jacket. When it wasn’t chewing on my jacket it was humping a canvas tarp we put in the back seat. Squirming constantly. Wiggling. Whining. Climbing onto me. I can only imagine what it must have looked like to people in the cars we passed.

The city and county have built a new pound which, fortunately for us, is about half as far away as the old pound. As it was we made it to the pound about 15 minutes before they closed. And they took him away to hold for 72 hours before they release him to a rescue group. It’s a relief not to feel like we have only two choices, either to take a stray in, feed it, house it and try to find a home for it; or to leave it to fend for itself in a cruel world. Now these wonderful people in the rescue groups do all the hard work.

Leah liked this dog. If we didn’t already have three, she said she would have wanted to keep  him.

It’s just barely possible that he was not dumped. He was wearing a collar but the tag had been torn off, and it wasn’t near any houses. Based on how reluctant it was to get out of our car at the pound, I suspect that it was forced out of a car right where we found it, and it didn’t want to repeat that experience. I’m probably reading more into his behavior that there really was, but I think part of the reason he was so excited in the car was that he was relieved to have been taken in after having been abandoned. Who knows?

It’s not at all uncommon to see abandoned dogs and cats on Huffaker Road and Fouche Gap Road. As I mentioned, one of our neighbors had just recently taken one into their own house. Coincidentally, the first car that came along after we stopped also stopped and slowly pulled up to us. It was driven by a man that I had talked to one day when he saw me walking the dogs. They, too, had only recently taken a stray into their home.

I suppose that in the greater scheme of things, abandoning dogs and cats ranks pretty low among all the despicable things that we do. But I hate it.

I took the dogs out for an evening constitutional around 9 pm Tuesday. I just walk them about halfway down the driveway when it’s dark, but that was far enough that Zeke smelled/heard something on the far side of the yard and took off. When I stepped off the driveway onto the newly-laid wheat straw, I couldn’t keep my footing and hold on the leash at the same time, so Zeke got away. He disappeared into the darkness of the woods. I suspect that it was a fox, because the night before we had seen glowing eyes and peaked ears directed towards the house from the edge of the yard.

I dropped Sam’s leash at the same time he tried to follow Zeke, but when I accidentally stepped on his leash and he felt the tug, he stopped immediately. Good dog! Lucy was oblivious. I couldn’t follow Zeke with the two other dogs, so I had to wait until I got them back into the house. At that point, all I could do was get into the truck and cruise around. I went down both sides of the mountain and up to both ends of Lavender Trail. No sign of Zeke. I did the same drive two other times before we went to bed with no better luck.

Of course I went out a few times and called, but I never expected him to come back to a call. He doesn’t respond to calls when he’s rampaging.

This off-leash excursion was different from all the many past ones. In all of those cases, Zeke has never spent the night outside. Leah and I both feared the worst. I imagined that he had been hit by a car and his body was lying somewhere in the dark off the side of the road. Or maybe he ran deep into the woods and snagged his leash on something, hanging himself. From past experience, I knew he barked when he was caught by the leash in the woods, and there was no barking that night or the next morning. Or maybe he just followed the fox too far into the woods and was lost. It happens.

The next morning I walked Sam and Lucy to the end of the driveway. I halfway expected to see Zeke down on the road (hopefully looking suitably chastened), but no. I noticed an SUV turn down Wildlife Trail in front of our old house, but I didn’t think much about it. As we walked back up the driveway, I heard a woman’s voice asking if I was looking for a dog. Zeke was in the back of her SUV.

She said her daughter had been driving across the mountain at a little after 10 and found Zeke walking down Fouche Gap Road. She stopped and picked him up — Zeke never met a stranger and has willingly jumped into other people’s cars on other occasions. So Zeke spent the night at these people’s house. Fortunately, the woman and I had met before so she had at least an inkling of where we might live. It turned out she had driven up to me and dogs as we tried to figure out what to do with another dog that was wandering around the mountain. She vaguely remembered me and I vaguely remembered her.

So it was all good in the end, although I doubt that Zeke learned anything from this incident.

In other dog news, Lucy may be getting old. She has been balking at going for our morning walks. This is the way she crosses the kitchen on the way out to the garage.

She sets her feet and slides across the floor. Once she accepts that she’s not sleeping in, she starts walking and doesn’t seem to have any problems. Unfortunately, not wanting to walk is not the only possible sign of aging. She also seems to be incontinent, or at least very careless about where she relieves herself. She has soaked her own bedding, and on Wednesday apparently soaked a spot bigger than herself in a new bed we had just brought home for Sam. I’m hoping it isn’t a sign of something more serious than just aging, although that would be bad enough. If it happens again, a visit to the vet will be in order.