guest post from an animal control officer

 

(hey folks. it’s time for another hijacking by my big brother. he’s an animal control officer. here’s what happened to him today.)

I had a weird, but good, but still weird day today.

Part of my job in the mornings when I don’t have a rookie scheduled, is Vets Runs, Mail & Money.  This means transporting shelter dogs back and forth to vet appointments for spay/neuters, check ups, whatever, and bringing outgoing mail and yesterday’s shelter receipts down to city hall to the finance clerks.  Today I had this duty.  I dropped a kitty off at one vet for her appointment and drove over to another vet to pick up a dog.  The vet is in a mall that has a grocery store.  Grocery stores sell orange juice.  I haven’t drank orange juice in a couple of years.  I decided I need some orange juice, so I ran into the store and got some, and then headed into the vet’s and picked up the dog I was supposed to pick up.  The OJ run cost me about 2 extra minutes. 

On my way out of the mall parking lot, just before I pulled out and into traffic, in my right rearview mirror, I saw a dog running through the parking lot behind me dragging a leash.  I looked out my window and saw one of the vet staff running after the dog.  I watched as the dog and the vet staff guy ran all the way across the huge parking lot to the other end of the block and into traffic at the intersection of two 4-lane roads. 

Fuck. 

I flipped on the overheads, crossed through the parking lot, swerved around the vet staff guy who was running through traffic and yelling a lot, bounced over a curb and sidewalk into already stopped on-coming traffic, u-turned into the intersection, drove over the median curb and grass strip, and followed this little dog for a mile and a half into the next town (out of my jurisdiction,) into a neighborhood off Blue Fin Lane & Del Obispo, and into a cul-de-sac. 

By this time the dog was tired, so I just parked my truck, crossed the lawn where it was hiding in the bushes and picked up the leash.  I had left my truck in the middle of the street with the door open, and the dog indicated it wanted to jump inside the cab.  I said no, you get to ride in the kennels like everybody else. (I am an idiot.)  I petted the dog, the dog seemed to like me, so I picked the dog up to put it inside the kennel I had opened. 

She bit the living fuck out of my right hand, in the exact same spot that Frank, the psycho vicious Dachshund had bit my right hand when I pulled him out from under a police car at Blue Fin Lane & Del Obispo two years ago. Okay, so she got to ride in the front seat on the way back to the vet where she escaped from.  Everyone was happy the vet got their customer’s dog back, the vet let me use their first aid kit and their betadyne, and I finished all the other shit I had to do.  Then I had to go to the doctor.  I was going to just go to the ER but my boss said no, ER’s too expensive, I had to go to the same quack that squeezed my nuts when I took my physical to get my job.  So I drove over there, and I got a weird feeling.  I can’t explain it, it was just one of those feelings like I was very aware of what I was doing, where I was, what was going on around me.  I go into the doctor’s office and the front office girls said they didn’t have a doctor in today.  I call my boss and she says now I have to drive to another doctor’s office 15 miles away.  So I drive up there.  I am in the parking lot of the new doctor’s office, and I see a lady fall out of her car onto her wheelchair, which collapses with her on it and her car keeps rolling.  So I get out of mine, stop hers before she gets hurt and help some other people put her back into her wheelchair.  Then I go inside the doctor’s office and there in the waiting room is Kasey, a girl I used to work with at Bike Magazine and haven’t seen since in 2002 and I got to meet her 2 year old son and let him play with my handcuffs.

So the point is, if you don’t have 2 minutes to drink some orange juice, don’t fuck around with a stray dog.