Last night, as we drove home from working at the gym, Katie and I were placing bets as to whether our association fees were actually paying off and they were plowing and shovelling around our townhome. Believe it or not, they were digging us out of the five inches of snow we were hammered with yesterday (Midway Airport, where the plane skidded off the runway, got nine inches).
Well, maybe not at that exact moment, but they had been working on it.
When we were driving up to the turn on our street, two plows were blocking our chances at straight-ahead movement while a third plow was blocking half the road we wanted to turn on. So I had to make quite a wide right turn.
In the middle of the turn, Katie yelled to me to stop. There was a yellow lab that had ambled out in the street from a driveway and didn't even care that a car was coming right at it.
For some completely inexplicable reason, I flashed it with my high beams (yeah, a dog's gonna know what to do with that, right?). He turned and walked up to my door and just looked at me. I started to pull forward very slowly hoping he would back up. He must've because I didn't hear any howling or feel any bump. Thank God.
Upon arrival at our home, I noticed that the bush by our driveway, which we had covered in white lights, was now also covered in a layer of snow resulting in a very eery glow from the lights trapped under their frozen blanket. Katie knew what I wanted to do, so she ran in and grabbed my digicam so I could snap some shots.
As I took some photos, I noticed the dog trotting up the middle of our street. I slapped the side of my thigh and whistled for the dog to come over. He did so quite happily. After I scratched his back and head a couple times, he bolted for my front door. When I walked over to the garage, he ran in after me and started rolling around on the floor and wagging his paws in the air. I figured he must've been cold so I grabbed a couple shop towels and patted his paws dry. He seemed to really appreciate it and just kept wagging his tail and following me whereever I went in the garage and out in the snow.
Katie and I own no pets... for a combination of reasons, really: 1) we're not sure our place is really big enough, especially for a dog the size of a lab; 2) we both have minor allergies, nothing terrible, but enough to mildly aggravate our sinuses when we visit the homes of people that do have pets (I have had pets before -- two cats -- and been able to deal with the allergies, though); and 3) we just don't have the money to take care of pets.
We weren't sure what we were going to do about this lab. I'm sure if I opened the door to the house, he would've jetted his way inside. In fact, he almost did when Katie opened the door to watch me take photos. She got the door closed just in time as a flash of yellow and white fur tore in her general direction.
I walked back outside and started playing with the dog again in the snow. He was soaking up the attention. However, as soon as one of the plows rolled by, he ran off after it. I dunno if he was bored with my attention or maybe he actually belonged to one of the plowers and was allowed to run around for a little while as they did their work.
I guess we'll never know. We didn't see him again.
We slept like crap last night worrying about this dog. And, if we happened to see him again or heard him outside, I'm pretty sure we would've let him in, allergies be damned. But we never did.
This morning, I looked around outside our place and saw no fresh pawprints. Ideally this means he found his home or one of the maintenance guys was his owner. Either one of those options are the only ones I want to consider at this point.
That's my beer, not his.
