Random memories: Dog days of summer

There is too much going on in my little brain just now and trying to tell you all about it will just make me sound like a madwoman teetering on the edge of sanity (which I probably am). But since writing calms me, I decided that I’d share a random memory that makes me laugh instead. (Yay!)

I think I was about 12 or 13 that summer. I was certainly still in junior high school and I was spending most of my days with my best friend, Rachel, in between my house and her parents’ auto supply store.

It started one day when a girl who lived kind of (ish) halfway between the two locations stopped us to tell us all about the new puppy she and her siblings got. They found it walking on the sidewalk a couple of days before and took it home. We asked if they tried to find the owners, but the girl told us “finders, keepers” and walked away.

Later that day, we were in the auto supply shop when a man came in with a picture of a puppy. He and his wife had just moved into a house across the road and their dog went missing whilst they were unloading the moving van. He quickly offered a reward for help in locating the dog.

So Rachel and I, always up to make an easy buck, hurried off to make a plan on how to get the dog out of the other girl’s yard and into the proper owners’ hands.

I can’t remember exactly how the plan worked, but it did include getting the help of a couple of other kids (bribed with Otter Pops or something like that) to help distract the girl and her siblings. Then I was nominated to sneak into the backyard and rescue the dog that was chained to a tree.

When we arrived dog-in-hand, the man’s wife was so excited that she was jumping up and down. Then Rachel and I were each handed a $10 bill – which made us jump up and down! ($10 was a lot of money for little kids back then!)

We talked about starting our own Dog Detective agency after that but quickly realised that there wouldn’t be much money to be made in such a small town. So instead, we took our money to the Greyhound Station to buy some sweeties and to visit King (the old man who ran the station).

As for the girl and her siblings, they never did find out what happened to the puppy that they so willingly snatched up. And we never told…

[Note: Image by Jonathan (pheochromocytoma), sourced on Flickr and used under Creative Commons License.]