People Who Shouldn't Have Dogs

This morning I saw something kind of awful. It was a pair of golden labs cantering along side-by-side, taking quick happy glances at each other as they ran, almost literally kicking up their heels with pleasure at being outside on such a day. Everything was washed with sunlight and the hedges in front of the apartment buildings were blanketed in banks of snow. It was so lovely - but something about it seemed weird, and then I realized it was that the dogs were out on their own, without an owner.

"Are they loose?" someone at my bus stop asked, and someone else said, "Yeah." The dogs ran kind of aimlessly up the block, then turned and ran back down, and abruptly raced out into traffic. A woman nearby cried out, "Oh! OH, NO! God, I can't look," and clapped her hands over her mouth in horror as six lanes of traffic screeched to a halt. The dogs made it across the road and gallivanted off.

Just then my bus pulled up and I got on, out of sheer inertia. Even as the bus was pulling away from the curb I was thinking about what I should have done. I should have gone to catch those dogs. I was already late for work, but so what. I should have run after them until I caught them. I could use my scarf to loop through their collars to hold onto them. I could take them into my apartment and shut them in the bedroom while I called the humane society. Or I could look at their collars for ID tags that might have their address. About halfway through the bus ride I realized I'd seen them before, leaving a house in a neighborhood about a half mile away. The owner was some guy who followed after them as they trotted down the street. He didn't have leashes on them that time, either, but at least he was with them. I'm so angry at him for being careless with his dogs. Why can't he walk them on leashes like he's supposed to? and take care that they don't run away? I blame him for putting them in danger. Perhaps even now he is frantically driving up and down the streets looking for them, out of his mind with worry. I hope so.

It reminds me of the guy I saw loading his pickup, on the side of that same road not too long ago, with his puppy hanging out with him. The dog was just gazing at the guy with adoration, sitting in the road watching him. Cars had to swerve into the next lane to avoid hitting the dog. The guy didn't even notice. Someone said to him, "Watch that dog," and he absent-mindedly snapped his fingers at the dog, which moved closer to him but still not entirely out of the road. But honestly! You wouldn't set your infant down in a lane of traffic while you're loading your truck, so why would you let your dog sit there? I hate it when people are irresponsible with their animals.