If You’re Not Responsible For Your Pets, You Never Know What Could Happen
When my godmother was young, in the 1970s, she lived on a rural road not far outside a small coastal town in California. Her family had a small farm with horses and chickens and multiple dogs. One of the neighbors had a pair of dogs who were allowed to wander and who often wandered to my godmother’s house. The dogs were a Chow Chow and a short-haired white dog whose breed my godmother did not know.
The dogs weren’t really a problem. They were friendly and well-behaved — they just liked to come visiting — but my godmother and her family worried about them getting hit on the road, or running into a bear or a mountain lion. Her parents called their neighbors several times and asked them to keep their dogs home before something bad happened to them. The neighbors always blew them off saying the dogs were fine, and they weren’t doing any damage so they didn’t need to keep them home.
One summer day, when the kids were home from school, my godmother’s mother had an idea. The dogs had come down the road to visit again, and this time, instead of trying to chase them off and tell them to go home, my godmother and her family lured them into the yard with treats. Then, they shaved the Chow and dyed the white dog orange with Kool-Aid.
By all accounts, the dogs did not object to this at all and were very happy with the attention and the treats. At the end of the day, the dogs went home as usual.
The owners of the dogs were quite upset, but my godmother’s family never admitted to any of it. The dogs were kept home after that incident.