Patches

A dog story with a happy ending...

This past Monday morning, Jim visited us (as usual) at 4:30 am for his morning cup of coffee. But this time, he had a dog on his doorstep (and he doesn't own a dog). It was a female mutt, mostly black with a few patches of white, and appeared to have a bit of German shepard in her. She was a very sweet dog, obviously cared for. She had a collar, but no tags.

Jim loaded the dog-stranger into his pickup and drove over to our house with her. Debbie, a serial animal rescuer, then went to work on repatriating the dog while Jim and I traveled to work. I got updates during the day on Monday that went roughly like this:

— talked with the neighbors; nobody ever saw her before
— put up signs all over the neighborhood
— nobody called about the dog
— nobody called about the dog
— nobody called about the dog

Then the breakthrough: on examining her more closely, Debbie discovered that our visitor had a 'chip' (a microchip, injected under the skin, that has a code number identifying the dog). Debbie knew that one of our neighbors (a Rottweiler breeder named Paula) had a "wand" for reading 'chips', so she hauled our dogly visitor down there and got the number read. Then she called our friend and vet (Jo) to find out where to call to find out who owned the dog with that code. Then she called that number, and a little while later got a call back with the owner's name and phone number. Finally, she called the actual owner's number...and got a woman who, when she figured out why Debbie was calling, burst into tears of joy to hear that her dog was safe and sound, and that she had just a few minutes drive to be reunited. Her husband came by a few minutes later, and Debbie reports (and I wish I'd seen it) that our visiting dog was over-the-top joyful to see him. And he was very happy to see her. He told Debbie that he and his wife had steeled themselves for the worst when their dog was missing overnight and they heard the coyotes baying (as they do every night). They really didn't expect a happy outcome...

It turns out that our visitor was named "Patches", and that she had escaped by opening a patio door into an unfenced yard. The owners live a mile or so away from us, as the dog runs, but much further (perhaps 10 miles) by road, so even though they are actually quite close neighbors (by our standards out here), we don't think of them as such.

This was the first direct experience we've had with the effectiveness of those 'chips' (which we have in all our animals). It was actually pretty comforting to know that this very small piece of modern technology can make such a difference...