Yesterday we had a little bit of excitement… we were leaving Ingles after doing some grocery shopping and I spotted a large brindle dog standing in the middle of the shopping center entrance, looking totally lost and bewildered. I pointed him out to Joy and we drove over for a closer look. Two women in an SUV had also pulled over to see if he needed help but he didn’t seem willing to come towards them. Joy got out of the car (I stayed behind so we wouldn’t overwhelm him with too many people at once and make him bolt into traffic) and she approached him from the side, talking to him as she approached.

Surprisingly, he went right to her. After I moment or so I got out and carefully approached, and he came over to me and put his head on my leg. He was thin and shaking from the cold and clearly a very old dog. He looked so confused it was obvious he wasn’t just some local dog out for a stroll around the neighborhood, and we couldn’t just leave the poor old guy there. So we made a quick decision and into the car he went. Obviously he was well acquainted with cars because as I held his collar and Joy put the back seat up, he was waiting impatiently to get in. Away we went with our rescuee happily looking out the back window… the question was “now what?”

We took him to REACH emergency clinic to be scanned for a microchip (he had a collar on but no tags) but he didn’t have one, and we drive him around the Biltmore Forest area where we’d found him, stopping to ask joggers and people out walking their dogs if they’d ever seen him before. No one recognized the dog, and it didn’t help that he was making a point of telling them that this was HIS car, so back off.

The animal shelter would not be open until Monday morning and we were not real happy with the idea of taking him there, as if his owners didn’t turn up to find him he would most likely not be deemed adoptable due to his advanced age. If nothing else, we could at least put him up for the night while we figured out what else to do. At least with this house we have a large warm basement, so housing an extra critter temporarily is more of a possibility than it was in the past.

After a quick shuffle around of litterboxes and such, the big guy was safely inside and eating a bowl of food. He was obviously familiar with being inside, stairs, and tennis balls — which he could fit two of in his mouth at once. He was such a sweet dog we just couldn’t imagine that there wasn’t someone out there missing him, and hoped that once we called the shelters in the morning we’d find his family. Of course, the shelters are also full of really sweet dogs who got dumped like yesterday’s trash by owners who didn’t care, so we were also worried what might happen if we didn’t come up with a lost report.

We felt bad making him stay in the basement but we didn’t know how he’d be with other animals, and ours with him, so we made him a nice bed under the stairs and guiltily left him standing at the top of the stairs with a tennis ball in his mouth. We left the light on so he could find his way back down the staircase, and when Joy snuck back later to turn it off, she said “that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever seen, he went back downstairs but he left the tennis ball sitting on the top step.”

We both spent a restless and uneasy night wondering what we would do if his owner couldn’t be found; we absolutely cannot take in another animal — that is a cut and dry fact — but we certainly couldn’t send him off to most likely become another sad statistic in the pet overpopulation problem, either. (My night was also restless and uneasy because Wednesday decided to try and throw up a hairball ON ME in the middle of the night, but that’s a whole ‘nother story).

Did I mention that this calf-sized dog had a bad case of diarrhea? We figured we’d probably wake up to a mess, and were not disappointed. Nothing like scrubbing a basement floor at 7 AM on a Monday morning after a poor night’s sleep… but this story, which probably sounds like the beginning of yet another train wreck in the chaos that is our lives, had a quick and happy ending. Joy called the shelter as soon as they opened and they’d had a lost report fitting his description!

Shortly thereafter, “Lumber” was reunited with his very worried owner. He had just moved to the area (amusingly, though we found the dog about 10 minutes away, he actually lives a couple of streets over from us in our neighborhood) and let Lumber out to potty; he said usually he’d have a leash on but because he was having tummy troubles and needed to go out in a hurry he just took him out loose, and that’s when 10-year old Lumber decided to take off for an adventure. Lumber is now back safely home with his mother and his human family, and we’re happy to have been able to help him get there. And we needed to scrub that basement floor anyway.