I found a black labrador a couple of nights ago. I was walking my dog at a bit past midnight and saw the labrador trotting along the pavement on the other side of the road with no owner in sight and wearing a collar and a car harness, so I crossed over and held onto it for a few minutes to see if someone was walking along behind it or running after it. Nobody came, so I took it home with me and called a mobile number that was engraved on a disk on it's collar along with a surname, but the number was no longer in service and all I got was an error message.
I left my dog at home, went back out with the labraror and spent a while running around the local area, letting it decide where to go in the hope that it would find it's way home or that I'd find someone who was looking for it or who knew who it belonged to. I spoke to a few people, none of whom could help, and it became apparent that the labraror was just happy to run around the streets and wasn't in any hurry to go home. When I got back, mum had come home from a social outing, and she looked up the name in the phonebook and called a few people to see if any of them had lost a dog, but none of them had, although one of them said they'd had a phone call a couple of weeks ago from someone else who was trying to find the same dog's owner. She called the police too, but the person she spoke too refused to send anyone to collect the dog and didn't even take her details in case the owner called the police to look for it.
We kept it overnight and I slept (unsuccessfully) on the couch downstairs to keep it company. The next day, while I was catching up on the sleep that I'd missed, mum called the police again and spoke to someone who was more helpful and who took her details, but the officer told her that nobody had phoned too look for it, and if they took the dog, it would go to the local pound and be euthanised if it wasn't collected within 2 weeks, so she decided to try to find the owner herself. It was Sunday, so most places were closed, but she found a veterinary hospital that was open and they knew the dog and contacted the owner, who turned out to live just around the corner from here, about 150 metres away, and I'd gone right past the house when I was running around with the dog the night before.
The owner said she'd tied it up outside while she had a barbecue and it had gotten loose, and that it was the fourth time it had escaped. She also said that she'll update the phone number on the collar, get it microchipped and get some fencing to keep it from wandering out of the garden, but mum wasn't instilled with confidence when she met the owner and I won't be surprised if I see it roaming around the neighbourhood again.
Mum called the police back and also the people in the phone book that she'd called the night before and gave them the details of the owner to make her easier to track down if anyone else starts phoning around in search of the owner of a black labrador.
