FOUND

We are the Jenningsgirls dog rescue team with a great reputation for protecting the canine lost and helpless and reuniting them with their loved ones. Amy can sniff out a lost puppy a mile away and won’t rest til we’ve saved it.

A few months ago I walked our dog Lucky to school on a sunny afternoon to pick the girls up. We wandered around the outskirts of the local park on our way home, throwing sticks for our obsessive-retriever until Amy spotted an unsupervised little terrier. “He has no owner Mum” – “I’m sure his owner is around here somewhere sweetheart” – “no, he doesn’t belong to anyone, we can’t just leave him here” – “sigh”.

So after sending Amy to ask any likely suspects about ownership with no success, I did have to reluctantly admit that this dog looked like he’d gone AWOL. Fortunately he had a mobile phone number on his tag and I had my phone in my pocket and moments later I was speaking to his surprised owner who was 20 minutes drive away at work – he was an escapee! I offered to drop him off on our walk home only to find that she lived further up the street from us, so in the end Kubrick came home with us to have a playdate with Lucky until our neighbour came home from work.

Amy has stopped another neighbour’s dog Luigi from being accidentally run when he got out (there are clearly armies of North Fitzroy dogs tunneling away merrily each day) and today we saved the adorable Tiger. She is just the sweetest puppy, scampering down the middle of the road all on her lonesome this afternoon - thank goodness she hadn't been hit by a car. I called out "puppy, puppy, puppy" to her and she just leapt into my arms and snuggled in, trembling, poor little thing.

So we scooped her up and tried to find her owner, but to no avail. Went to the local vet to find that she had no microchip, they wanted to take her to the animal shelter, but the look on the girls’ faces - oh no! We couldn’t give her up without trying for a reunion and said we planned to doorknock first – she brought out the protective instinct in all of us. LOL

We doorknocked a little, then decided to try again after 5.30pm as I figured her owner was probably at work (no convenient phone number on the tag this time). The girls just cooed over her happily while I worked on a FOUND poster (with the photos above) until a knock at the door revealed her frantic owner who had been directed to our house by someone we'd spoken to – she was wildly grateful and relieved as it was her sister’s dog who had dug its way out while she’d been at work. We were all sad to see her go – she had burrowed straight into all our hearts, but she’s another dog we can proudly add to our SAVED list! (Oh and just to show what equal animal opportunity rescuers we are, we also saved our neighbour's cat Oomi from what Amy called "the bully cat" who was beating it up thoroughly.)


Thanks for the great suggestions for a holiday song to send out into the universe with hope, but this is my fave oldie-but-goodie on the topic. Love vintage Madonna - her style, her choreography (kind of a groovy aerobics routine) and maybe that she looks like she's really enjoying herself - long before she was British Madge with the wincingly cut biceps, leotards, botox etc. Or maybe I just feel so affectionate because this was from when I was just a teenager, taping my favourite songs off local radio 3BA in the days when the dinosaurs roamed the earth... ;) Imeem is down for maintenance at the moment, so here's the youtube video clip in the meantime. And it is the last day of term today (YAY), so v. appropriate...