There seems to have been a lot of talk about dogs lately. Friends of our recently got a puppy, we enjoy visiting and taking walks once in a while with them. Natalie enjoys this most often, she spends a fair amount of time with Kelsey and Claire.
And it’s all been a very good thing from my perspective, I think the kids will have a better idea about what’s involved in owning a pet. But those who know me well will know that very few dogs can ever measure up to my own, may he rest in peace, Lester.
Stories about Lester are out there (he once saved a life), and I’m at sort of a loss when I try to recall my favorite one. But there was a time when I almost lost him, and none of the subsequent legends would have come to be part of my memory.
I came home from work one rainy day to find he was gone, bored with his dog house and the cold rain. The yard was fair sized and he had companionship in Mark’s black lab, Onyx. There were kids that he liked playing with, sometimes a couple of 8 year old girls would come to the door asking if they could play with him. This time, however, there was no sign of him anywhere. I made calls, checked his usual haunts – the elementary school around the corner was a favorite. Nary a sign. I posted flyers and put an ad in the local paper seeking his return. The ad ran a week, and on the day before it was set to expire I finally got a call.
A lady probably in her 60s called me at work and described the situation to me. She told me that her neighbor, some dangerous maniac who lived there about a year was suddenly showing up in his yard with a golden retreiver that matched the description seen in the ad. She had spotted him from over the fence. I was warned that this guy was probably going to kill me if if I stepped onto his residence, but she was just interested in doing the right thing as a concerned pet owner herself.
Great. I’m scared and apprehensive, preparing for the worst.
I drive over to the place that afternoon, I forget where in the flatlands of Hayward, the lady’s house was well kept and sat close to the street, right next to a lot with dying grass upon which a 1930s bungalow sat. It wasn’t as nice as her house, but I expected a weather beaten sugar shack by the way she described the situation on the phone. I spot Lester on the porch with a young girl and boy, maybe 8 and 5 years old. In the driveway, closer to the house sits a U-Haul truck and a pickup loaded down with what looks like the contents of the household. Not exactly Tom Joad, but you get the picture.
Turns out that this was about the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet, as for the neighbor lady’s warnings, I have no idea where that was coming from. I explained to him the situation and when Lester saw me he ran to me excitedly, so the guy knew right off the bat that I was legit.
He’d had Lester for about a week and his kids had become somewhat attached to him. After all, this was a dog that was only disliked by cats and rodents. Mr. Phychotic (not) now has his own Lester story to recount to me.
I’d say it was around the end of March and the last of the rains were making their way through. Lester bolted from the yard and meandered around the neighborhood, probably not expecting to embark on an epic walkabout, but nevertheless, he wound up on Foothill Boulevard, making it about a mile down the road to the Safeway store. Led by the aroma of rotissierie chicken, he made it behind the counter at the deli. The store manager’s having a fit, on the store intercom he’s trying to locate the owner, since his tags were somehow gone. My new friend steps up and says he’ll take care of the situation. I think he had good intentions of finding Lester’s true owner, but once his kids got in on the action, his willingness to make that effort subsided. He hadn’t seen the ad, but I’m very grateful his neighbor did.
The kicker is that he was getting ready to pull up stakes and leave for Texas with family and dog in tow the very next day. His kids bid a tearful farewell, I think I even saw a tear welling up in his own eye.
So I came real close to losing him, but it turned out to be one of those experiences that helped build the legend.
Lester lived about 9 more years, I chalk this one up to his youthful exuberence.