FRIDAY, MAY 1, 2015"Coming home from a late dinner on the final day of January, I pulled into my cold driveway. I do a double take while exiting my car to see a large beagle dog underneath my neighbor's vehicle. Kneeling down for a closer look the dog reveals itself by popping forward from underneath the car. A few pats of the head, the stirred dog has a look of despair in its deep brown eyes. My first intuition is that this dog is lost. It's too well groomed to be a stray dog. There's an Ohio State collar around its thick neck with a gold heart shaped dog tag. The shiny tag reveals the name, Hero. I'm close with my immediate neighbors so I knew this dog wasn't one of theirs. Flipping the dog tag over, engraved is the owner's name and phone number. Wonder, problem solved, or so I thought. Upon calling the number I'm faced with the robotic message: 'You have reached a number that is no longer in service. Please check the number and dial again.'
From this point on I've adopted myself a new title, Doug Brown: Pet Detective. Objective number one is to find the new phone number of what I assume is the current owner. The dog is now showing nothing but affection and has happy breathing with jolts of excitement.
The dog is leery, but yet playful. In Sherlock Holmes mode, I'm jumping on the internet finding myself scrolling through the vast yellow pages. Old school techniques using new school technology. As their slogan says, let your fingers do the walking. I'm searching for a female's name that I'm assuming is of German descent. To my surprise, my eyes open wider upon stumbling across a matching name in the neighboring town. It's already ten thirty PM, so I'm hesitant on calling. I would press snooze until the following morning if we were talking about a lost bicycle. However, this was someone's pet which is the equivalent of a child to its owner. Ring, ring, ring. The old style answering machine greets me with a standard message with a voice that matches the accent to its name. Mid message a woman picks up the phone, "Yes?" she says. I reply "Sorry to call so late but do you have a dog named Hero?" She informs me she was the original owner but gave the dog to her ex-coworker over two years ago. Empathetic to the dilemma, she scurries to find the phone number of this ex-coworker. She returns, somewhat discombobulated, to reveal the name and number of this girl.
Problem solved. Again, so I thought. The number was disconnected. The catch was she didn't know the correct spelling of the girl's name. I was now searching back online for a women that had a first and last name that could be spelled multiple ways.
You would not believe in the yellow pages and on the social network sites how many ways one can spell Lindsey, Lindsay, Lindsy, or Lynzy. And that was just the first name issues. So at this point my fingers were doing the running and dialog and posting on the social network site was ignited. You could write an online post about meeting the president this afternoon and you will receive some feedback and a couple of emails. Say you have a lost dog and holy moly the sirens are in full force.
I had people sharing my story on everything short of a milk carton. After jumping through many hoops, I did find the number for the workplace of the next contact. Hero spent the night as content as if he was staying in the Radison hotel for an evening.
Next morning, Doug Brown: Pet Detective is ready for a new day. I place my first phone call to that of this new contact. The connection is made to which I'm told the dog used to be hers but she had given Hero to her younger brother. I was given the brother's phone number and we said our goodbyes. Sure enough, her brother's phone number was disconnected. Believe me by this point I contemplated keeping the darn thing. However, the hand had been dealt to see this thing through. My dialog with Hero to this point was "Hang in there little buddy, we will get you back home." Through some more hoops I got the correct number and the final connection was established.
The owner was ecstatic. Their family was up all night looking for the dog. He told me his kids especially were unable to sleep due to the absence of their lost dog.
Why the dog tags were years old is beyond me. 'You should get updated dog tags, my friend.' was the first thing I said when dropping Hero off. There was an electric charge in Hero when spotting the house and the owner. His fiercely wagging tail and his enthusiastic panting.
Driving away and seeing the kids coming out to celebrate Hero's welcome home gave me warm feelings. In twenty-four hours all of that transpired for this dog. He could have been hit by a car or been taken to the Humane Society. The moral of the story isn't just update your dog tags. Was I a hero? Maybe to Hero, I was a hero. An appropriate name choice from the original owner I must say. Case closed - Doug Brown: Pet Detective." - p. 62-64 -
Looking Glass Self - Hope Optimism and the Journey Within; Doug Brown