Buddy

The other night, just after having gotten settled into my new apartment, I started to get pretty bored, even a little lonely. I decided to peddle over to the house I had just moved out of, where there were people, and cable.

As I was turning the corner and Division and Ainsworth, a big white pit bull comes running up to me. The dog scared the crap out of me at first, but I decided, what the heck, give him a little ear scratch. He was wearing a collar, so I figured he might be nice. It turns out he was.

I gave the lil' guy a good pet and then started biking again. After about two minutes the dog is running next to me through the yards at my side. I figure, O.K., he'll be gone after a while. Well, I wish I had the endurance that dog had, because he was never gone after a while.

At this point I decide that I better take this dog with me so that I can get him to the Humane Society or something where his owners will find him. This proved to be somewhat frustrating.

Buddy, as I will call him, was not at all afraid of cars. As I peddled in the street, he kept running out next to me. At one point his head was directly in front of the bumper of a big white truck. The passenger in the truck wasn't too happy, sticking his head out of the window to give me a snooty, "Get your dog out of the street!" I get a little "tickled" when people stick their noses into my business, so I gave him a snooty little, "It's not my dog!"

A little further down the road a woman is coming out of her fenced in yard as we pass. Again, I look like an idiot as the dog shoots through her gate to go take a leak all over her bushes. I have to explain for the second time that Buddy is not mine, and that he's been following me since Division. At this point, Buddy and I weren't too far from Alder.

I really wasn't looking forward to Alder. Let me clarify: Buddy isn't just unafraid of cars; Buddy has a death wish. The dog hesitated at the corner of 11th and Alder, and, for a moment, I thought that the crossing would go smoothly. However, Buddy took to the street just before I could get my hand around his harness, and of course there were cars coming.

Luckily the lead car had time to stop and wait for us as Buddy ran a few circles in the middle of the street. Really, it was no big deal, there were only four cars lined up waiting for us to get the hell out of the way. All I could really do was tell one of the drivers that I was sorry and get to the other side where loud smooching noises were enough to coax the dog over. But then I have to wait for the other cars to go by, the last of which is filled with obnoxious girls critiquing the way that I choose to let my dog run around loose. It's not my freaking dog!!! They also "tickled" me a little bit. Now we were just a couple of blocks from Union.

If Alder was a challenge, Union was going to be ridiculous. It was time to grab on to Buddy's harness and not let go. I had to bend down in order to hold onto it and it didn't take long for my back to start hurting. Being the resourceful person that I am, and being that yellow "CAUTION" tape is as conspicuous as it should be, I quickly fashioned a leash in the same way that I saw McGyver do it a few years back, only this time with no Swiss Army knife. It worked pretty well and Buddy and I made it across Union without a hitch.

Buddy was a little scared at first back at the house. He warmed up to everyone pretty quickly. I gave him a some water which apparently went right through him and all over the trash can and the kitchen floor. I cleaned it up so that he could do it again five minutes later.

I started making phone calls to get him off my hands, but it was Sunday night and all the animal shelters were closed. I made a last ditch effort by calling the police non-emergency line. After being put on hold for about ten minutes the receptionist gets back to me with a number I can call. I called, glad that I would soon be getting Buddy off of my hands, and was connected to the answering machine of Tacoma Radiological Associates, or something like that. Hmm, we all love x-rays, but I didn't think that was going to help me out that much. It now looked like Buddy was going to be spending the night.

I put up some boards in the back yard so that Buddy would not be able to escape along the side of the house. I then let him loose back there and went back inside, remember, where there was cable. Then I hear a loud crashing noise and realized immediately that my barrier was no contest for Buddy. I ran out the front door, and sure enough, here comes Buddy right out from alongside the house and into the neighbor's yard to baptize some more bushes.

Dammit Buddy, now you are getting tied up. I don't think that Chuck would have approved of me using his climbing rope to tie up the dog for the night, so I had to opt for the next best thing. I tied an extension cord from Buddy's harness to the railing and then went inside again, confident that that was the last I would have to be dealing with him for a while, but Buddy is a very vocal dog.

The whimpering began just as I started to relax. It really wasn't that bad. He wasn't breaking my heart or anything, just busting my ass. If I let him inside again we'd have had another puddle in our kitchen and I'd touched enough of that stuff for one night. But then the whimpering turns to howling, and I felt obligated to go tell the neighbors that it probably won't be a quiet night on Union.

When I went outside I see that Buddy had managed to get himself and the extension cord totally tangled up in the railing that he was anchored to. Buddy had reduced what had once been a 15 ft. tether to about a foot. I tried to coax him back through the railing in the opposite direction that he had come, but he didn't fit back through the railing posts. I have no clue how he got through in the first place. I was anticipating my first bit by a pit bull as I picked Buddy up in order to get enough slack to untie him. He didn't bite me, he's a nice dog. That is why I named him Buddy.

Anyway, after that I tied him up where he couldn't get tangled and went back to my apartment for the night. The next morning, at about 8 o'clock, the Humane Society calls me up asking if I still had the dog. I made arrangements to have him picked up and then drove back over to the house.

Buddy was still there, laying on top of a blanket that one of the guys had grabbed for him the night before. Poor little guy was shivering so I covered him up and gave him another good scratch. Then I decided that instead of waiting around all day for some guy to come and put a choke stick around his neck and force him into a cage in the back of a truck that I would drive him to the Humane Society myself.

I took Buddy out to my car and opened the trunk to grab a towel so that I could over my seats. Buddy jumped right in, so that was easy enough. I folded the back seats down so that he wasn't just bumping around in the dark back there and he perched himself up on the arm rest, right between me and the passenger seat.

I had to roll the windows down a bit because Buddy wasn't smelling so pretty that morning. At first he just stuck his head out of the window, but later thought he could propel his whole body out into the street. Luckily he was unsuccessful.

I really felt bad as we got closer to the Humane Society. Buddy had become my buddy. Here I was, for the first time, driving down the road with something other than a shi-tzhu poking their head out of the window. I wanted to keep him, despite the nasty slobber Buddy was spilling all over my window.

Well, we're at the Humane Society now. When I went in the woman at the desk was busy with something else so she threw me a leash as she went out to the parking lot. I put the leash on Buddy and took a seat. Buddy could hear the other dogs howling in the back. I wondered what the howls meant. Buddy knew, and probably didn't like it. That thought was interrupted when the woman at the desk came back with a cardboard box, telling saying, "Oooh, that poor man's dog died last night and he didn't know what to do with it. O.K. what can I do for you?" As she threw the box into a back room I explained the situation. She handed me a form to fill out.

Buddy was already leashed to the wall behind the desk by the time I finished the form. He was looking towards the back where all the howling was coming from. The woman said that I could go now, so I stepped back towards Buddy and gave him one last ear scratch. I asked how long it would be until Buddy was put to sleep. She told me that pit bulls cannot be adopted out of the Humane Society and that if he is not picked up, Friday would be his last day. I then walked out the door.

I knew that I shouldn't look back, but I did anyway once the door closed behind me. When I turned around Buddy was already watching me. It was the same look that he gave me the night before when I left to go back to my apartment. Do you think he thinks I'll be coming back for him again like I had that morning? I don't know. Hopefully he's forgotten about me by now, but I'm going to leave that slobber on my window for a while. At least through Friday.