Shih Tzu Assistance Service

Early this afternoon, my work calendar was delightfully clear, so I went for a walk.

I was a few blocks from home when somebody walked up to me. He was not following social distancing guidelines. But that’s okay, because he was a Shih Tzu.

Unfortunately this little guy had no collar, and did not seem to be zeroing in on home. He started walking in the direction from which he had come. I figured I should follow.

I don’t know what other people might have done at that point. Maybe they would have immediately made phone calls I eventually made. But right then, I felt like the dog was in some kind of trouble, and needed a human to keep an eye on it.

Two blocks later, we were at Ogden Avenue. If you live anywhere remotely near here, you know that it doesn’t matter where on Ogden Avenue we were. If you don’t live anywhere remotely near here, consider that Ogden Avenue is U.S. Route 34. This is not a street that an 18 pound dog should be attempting to cross.

And so I found myself redirecting this guy west. A block later, we turned and went back south. I’d hoped that a frantic owner would have appeared on the street somewhere, or at least a neighbor who recognized the little guy. But by a half block later I figured I was stuck figuring something else out.

I looked up the Humane Society, found the closest one, called, nobody there. Nobody is anywhere these days, after all. I tried the police department next. Left a message. Tried the nearest vet. They said to take him to the police department. Okay. But I was six blocks from home now.

I posted his picture on a local Facebook group and brought him home. After a while somebody posted for sure they knew roughly where he’d come from, a few blocks further up on the street where I’d found him. I decided to walk him there. The police called back. I told them I’d gotten a tip online. They said to call back if I wanted to file a report.

My son and I went looking for his house. Couldn’t figure anything out. I rang a couple doorbells, knocked on a door, couldn’t find anybody. The phone rang. Same lady from the police department. She knew who the owner was.

We walked home, piled in the car, drove over to the police department. Walked in and there was his owner sitting there waiting. He’d snuck out of a yard where a fence was being replaced.

She had a Cubs hat on. I had a Sox hat on. Who says people can’t get along?

A very long time ago I lived in Normal, Illinois, and I had two absurd beagles. Sara was a little older and a little tubbier and a little more bassetty. Murray was… well, Murray was neurotic. He looked completely like a classic beagle and acted like… no other creature ever, and/or every human teenage male ever.

They snuck out of the yard a couple of times. A gate between the back and side yards was just so that it was a place a beagle could squeeze through. After a couple of excursions I built a gate out of wood. A very, very heavy gate. It worked! They didn’t get out again. But please, never hire me to build a gate.

One time they had snuck out, and I got in the car, and I found Sara almost immediately. I couldn’t find Murray. Sara and I went tracking for him. Who knows what she was tracking. He finally just came home about six hours later.

One other time they bolted, and I didn’t realize right away. Around the time I went to bring them in and found they weren’t actually in the yard, a truck pulled up in the driveway. A couple had found the hounds. They had managed to cross a busy street. They were headed to Wal-Mart. (I thought I’d raised them better than that.)

The beagles had collars with tags with my address and phone number. Tthe people in the truck could have called me, but they went a step beyond and just brought them home. They weren’t obligated to do that. They were just good people.

I had that day in mind as I was trying to figure out how to get this little Shih Tzu home. By “in mind” I mean I thought about it. I do not mean that I was running down the street screaming I SHALL PAY IT FORWARD!

That’s what META-SPIEL is for. It’s the virtual equivalent of running down the street screaming.

Anyway, Odie is home, and we are home, and it’s all good.

While I was trying to figure out how to get this guy home, some of the options which would ordinarily have seemed most obvious seemed a lot less so because of the pandemic. I would have just started knocking on doors right away, I think, on the assumption that he just hadn’t gotten that far from home. I would have stopped anyone and everyone I saw out and about.

In the end I did ask a couple other people I saw walking dogs if they recognized the Shih Tzu. I did ring a couple of doorbells. It still felt odd. Would you have answered the door if a strange man and a child were there holding a Shih Tzu you’d never seen before? Would you have done so in the midst of a pandemic? I can very much understand if you wouldn’t.

I think though that it’s important to keep trying to take care of each other, in ways above and beyond just outright avoiding one another. And that reality isn’t going to go away.

I dare say most of us are going to go weeks and weeks and not have anyone close to us get sick enough to go to a hospital. And the deeper in we get, the greater the dissonance is liable to be. The numbers will keep growing but we’ll actually feel more distant from them. We’ll retain an intellectual understanding of what’s going on but what will our emotional understanding of things be?

We have to physically isolate. Let’s not let it turn into emotional isolation. We still need to take care of one another. Even the little dogs.