Dog Catcher – Part I

Had a run in with the dog catcher. Sorry, Animal Control Officer. He had turned onto our street, stopped in front of our house, got out of his truck and was walking slowly beside it just as I had stepped out the front door in my house slippers.

Let me back up.

I was working on my laptop at the kitchen table from where I can see the main street that parallels the north side of our house. We live on the corner of this street and another dead end street, which is no more than a hundred feet long. Sort of a cul-de-sac really. I was working away when I looked up because out of the corner of my eye I saw two red brake lights on what appeared to be a pickup truck. Probably stopping for a moose in the street, happens all the time. Then I saw the backup lights go on and the truck moving in reverse, and fast. I jumped up and ran to the living room window to see why it was backing up. From there I saw a car coming down the street, traveling in the proper direction, that had to slow suddenly and swerve hard left to avoid an accident with the truck. What the hell? And it was a pickup truck, I could see that clearly now, a white pickup with an aluminum-colored shell over the bed, a few little doors cut into it with padlocks on them, and those words on the passenger side door, clear as day —  two big, black, punitive words painted bold: Animal Control. The driver slams on the brakes, throws the truck in drive and turns his doggie paddy wagon onto our dead end street, parks smack in front of our house and gets out.

That’s when I saw Kaya, our neighbor’s dog, in the street near the end of our driveway wagging her tail. Happy Wife is a known softy and gives Kaya treats when she does this, so it’s predictably Pavlovian. Been happening since we moved in five years ago. Who Kaya begged all the years before that — what, maybe ten? — who knows, but in all that time she’s become the neighborhood dog. Everyone knows her. Except the man — The Officer — who was by then out his truck and moving towards Kaya, slowly. I’m looking out the living room window thinking, You got to be kidding me. Kaya? Poster dog for sweetness? No, can’t be. I stepped in my slippers and went outside.

 … to be continued