Afternoon visitor

The kids were out front playing while I was inside working when I heard a very loud "Mom! There's a dog in the yard!"

So I ran out there and found a very friendly yellow lab wagging his tail and going to each of the kids for a pet. This poor guy was huffing and puffing and panting like he was roasting - it has been uber hot and humid today - so I put a bowl of water on the porch for him.

He came and went from our yard a few times over the course of the afternoon. A neighbor even brought him over thinking he was ours (Blu gets out and takes off any chance he gets).

Shane opened the schoolroom window at one point to say hi to him and he tried to climb in.  It was so hot that I let him in to cool off. He was panting so hard I thought he might be getting sick from the heat.

He wasn't wearing a tag so I called the company on the electric fence collar he was wearing. The nearest customer they had listed was in North Carolina. But they'd look to see if they had a dealer in the area previously and get back to me.

They didn't get back to me so around 4pm I decided we'd take him for a walk down our road to see if he belonged to anyone nearby. We got no's all around until finally a girl (late teens?) thought he might belong to a friend of hers. Cool!


I asked where she lived and the girl didn't know. Just a brown house on a road about a mile from there. Lovely. So we walked home and put Snoopy (the kids had named him by then) into the truck and off we went.

Happily he belonged to the folks who lived in the second brown house we stopped at - we passed about 10 others but the road is heavily traveled and I almost got rear-ended slowing down to pull into different driveways so I passed the houses rather than risk an accident with a drooling dog standing over my shoulder and 3 laughing, squealing kids in the back. They thought it was hysterical that he was drooling all over me. Me? Not so much.

So we pull in the drive, knock on the door - after he peed on every bush between the truck and the porch, and reunited Snoopy with his very happy mommy. And I forgot to ask her what his real name is. The kids were really sad to see him go because he was so friendly and sweet, and they asked me when they could go visit him because they missed him already.