House Guest

On Monday morning, I walk into the lobby of my place of business, a solid ten minutes before I need to be there, and I am instantly bombarded by three co-workers who want to know what to do with it. With what? I growl at them that I'm not even on the clock yet and that I'll get back to them. (It is a Monday.) I go and drop my stuff at my cube before returning to the front desk where I'm promptly walked out to the courtyard and shown a dog tied to a tree. What's that doing here, I ask. It was found chasing employees' cars in the parking lot, I was told. Hmmmmm... I took a closer look. Damn stray dog was cute. It was a male dog, white/yellow coloring, medium sized, floppy ears that made his face even cuter, and he had a great big grin. I'm telling you this dog could smile.



Now the last stray animal we found at work was quite a hassle. It was a black cat. Tons of women wanted to take it home, but we fended them off as we attempted to find the owner. We went through tons of phones calls, put up fliers, looked for fliers, checked websites. It just isn't as simple as it used to be. We use to just call Animal Control. But then we discovered that in today's current economy, they are euthanizing strays within a week of being turned in. We figured that we could keep the animal with an employee while we searched for the owner. At least we'd give it longer than a week and then we could find a willing employee to take the cat home permanently.

We knew we'd have to do the same with this dog. What a headache.

Still, just to be prepared, I called Lee at home and asked if he wouldn't mind watching a dog for a couple days while we searched for the owner. He said yes, but temporarily. I said sure. Plus, I put my name on the list of potential dog sitters at #8. In other words, there were seven other people before me who thought they could watch the dog for a week or two. It turns out that they couldn't. By noon I was on my way home with a dog in the back of the car.

I know what you're thinking. Poor Abby won't be able to understand that the dog is just visiting and won't be staying. Wrong, Abby picked up on the whole "he's staying with us until we can find the owners" thing real fast. In fact, when we took the dog for a walk that first night, Abby told two neighbors we met that very thing. And, as the days passed, it became quite apparent that Abby doesn't truly like the dog. (Not that the dog did anything to her or scared her or anything.) When she visits Grammy's house, where two dogs live, Abby gets licked in the face, whipped with tails, pushed around and generally dog-handled. Though she hates saying bye to Grammy, I don't think she minds at all leaving the two dogs behind. And she views this dog the same way. She won't shed a tear when it comes time for the dog to leave.

And I know what else you're thinking. Eh, it looks like Chrissy and family has a new dog. Well, after a week's worth of dog owner searches, finding and removing a tick on the dog, cleaning up one "oops" on the carpet, general Abby disapproval, general dog bad habits and lack of training, and our own disappearing free time (what little we had), Lee and I have agreed to absolutely not keep the dog. If we have to, we'll give it away to anyone even remotely interested.

It's not that the dog isn't cute. And with the progress we've made with training out some bad habits, like jumping up on you and licking your feet for attention, it's obvious that the dog is a fast learner. It's just that we don't need/want the hassle he'll bring to our lives right now. People make their own headaches far more often than they realize. And this headache is one we don't have to take.

Know anyone who wants a cute dog?