Pbenjay's Blog

For some reason I thought you  were supposed to be able to catch up on your sleep over the weekends.  What a concept! Last weekend which was chronicled here as you know brought us to the ER at 11:30pm with our friend Heide and we didn’t get home till 2am!  And our friend, Joe, was in the ER that day too but at least he was there during the day and our friends, Susan and Jim were in vigilance then.

This weekend just as I was winding down on my computer and had finished  copying (yet) more recipes, both of our cats, Nick and Nora were in front of the screen door to the front porch.  Nick was crouched and Nora had her back up – Peter said he saw something moving on the porch.  The wind was pretty strong as a storm was coming in and several times I thought I saw something moving outside on the porch but it was just the flag waving in the wind.

It was not the wind but rather a big black dog who was wagging her tail and crying to come in! What the heck?? A dog on our porch and it was almost midnight!! We turned on the lights and there she was, jet black, tail wagging furiously and crying as only a dog who wants to come in does.  She looked like a Black Labrador Retriever with maybe a little Pit Bull but maybe not. Nora hissed as she knew any self-respecting cat would when a dog arrives on your doorstep.  Nicky leaned into the screen, nose against it and watched with the utmost curiosity-he’s definitely friendlier and more tolerant than Nora.

Well now what to do? Peter is beside himself because the dog doesn’t have a collar on and we wondered why someone was not looking for this pooch.  We stood on the sidewalk and looked up and down the street, straining our ears to hear someone calling out for a dog.  Nothing….No one….  We were not about to leave him on the porch – for one thing she was whimpering and crying to get into the house and incessantly wagging her tail.

Finally we decided to call Jim and Susan because like who else do you call in Ocean Grove when there’s an emergency? I called the cell-no answer so I called the house phone and got Susan.  True to her giving and caring nature, she said,”I’ll put my jeans on and come over” .  They arrived shortly thereafter with several collars and a leash. I said, “why don’t we just take the dog straight to the emergency room”?  LOL

We waited around hoping someone would cruise by looking for the dog.  Susan tried calling Cindy who runs the Dawg Joint but it was midnight and no answer.  Susan then thought to call the police.  The Neptune police said no one had called in a lost dog but they would come and pick it up if we wanted them to.  That was an idea however, they would keep the dog overnight and by 8am the next morning the Humane Society would get the dog.  This sounded way too tenuous for us because what would happen to the dog after a few days at the Humane Society…we didn’t want to think about the consequences.  So Susan left her cell phone number and gave the police a description of the dog.  And then she called the Bradley Beach police to give them the information and her cell.  Not more than 5 minutes went by when her phone rang.  It was the Neptune police department who had a woman on the line who was reporting a lost dog.  She reconfirmed the description and hooray, the dog’s owner was coming to get her.

In less than 5 minutes a car pulled up with a very anxious and teary “mommy”.  As soon as the dog saw “mommy” there was no more crying or whimpering- just tail-wagging.  Once owner and dog were reunited we learned our visitor’s name was Haley and she had been missing for over 2 hours!  They had cruised our street and were scouring the surrounding side streets in hopes of spotting her – not so easy to see a black dog in the middle of the night.

Haley went home with her owners and it turns out they live down the street from us so we’ll surely see Haley again on one of her walks.  All’s well that ends well or so they say.  As for the four of us, it seems like the beginning of another sleepless weekend – it was now 1am!!

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