Four Dog Night

In the animal world there are two types of strays, those that pass by Brooke unnoticed and those that get rescued, these are their stories.
Last night after we had just put Olivia down for the night our dogs started going crazy and barking in the sunroom. Brooke looked out and saw a big black lab wandering aimlessly in our back yard. Being Brooke, she immediatly sprang into action. She went outside and checked the collar, much to Chili's dislike and objection. The only thing on it was a current rabies vaccination number. There was a pretty big storm brewing already so she brought her into the front yard away from our dog's view and started calling some numbers. First was the vet to see if we could get an address from the rabies number. They were closed. Next came animal control, they were closed and wouldnt have an officer on duty until Thursday (apparently in Clinton, you can go a day or two with out animal control???) Next we stopped our neighbor who was on his way out and asked if he knew the dog. He did not, but had his wife call the vet at home (they are good friends) and she couldn't help until morning. So there we were, a stray lab, our yard, Olivia asleep, and a storm approaching. To Brooke, there was no choice. Let the dog stay in the carport over night and deal with it in the morning. The dog was already hiding in our bushes at the sound of the distant thunder.
So Brooke walked the dog in the carport, gave her some food, water and a blanket and headed inside. The storm picked up pretty quick, and soon it was pouring like crazy and lightning was everywhere. It was pretty spectacular actually, however, now we had a knocking at our garage door. Well, not knocking, but a frantic scraping. Obviously she wanted in. We let it go for a few minutes and decided to stop her because we didn't want the door damaged. Upon opening the door we saw the bite marks. If we didn't do something she was going to literally chew through the door. So we thought about it a while and decided on closing the metal/screen door and put a plastic bin in front of that to stop her. We patted ourselves on the back, headed back in (through the side door and through the rain) and went inside. Not long after there was that scraping again. I went back outside through the back and saw her standing over the bin, she had ripped through the metal grate and screen and was chewing the door again.
We stood there not knowing what to do when I said "Nice, next the power is going to go out and we are really going to be in a mess"..... 5 minutes later we saw the transformer blow up in the distance. DARKNESS.....
I went back into the house and fumbled for some flashlights.
At this point we knew we had to do something because there was no stopping her from destroying our door. We called the police to see if they could come and at least take her. We got the run around saying we weren't in the city (funny, we get trash pickup and pay city water and taxes...) and finally got a county cop to come out. I was surprised at how fast he got there. Guess small towns do have their advantages.
Mr. Sheriff walked up and explained that he does not handle dogs and he was sorry. Best thing to do was wait until morning. We explained AGAIN that she was going to destroy our front door if nothing was done and explained that animal control was closed until Thursday. He told us that there were four animal control people that usually drove around drunk, but was surprised they wouldnt be around for an entire day. Then he had an idea. He told us he had the solution. We were thrilled. He was going to solve our problems. He looked right at me and said w/o cracking a smile, "Well, you could always.." and made a shooting gesture with his hand. I looked right back at him and said "Ok, you can go now." and that was the help from our police. We watched him drive off and felt kind of helpless..
So we made the hard decision that we needed to get her to the school up the street from us and let her off leash under the awning or something. I know that is bad, but unfortunately, we had no other choice. Tying her up away from the door was out of the question, she would have choked herself. I did NOT want her in my car so I told Brooke to follow me while I walked her to the school and she could follow me in the car. I took the umbrella, leashed her up and headed out in the pouring rain. It was not a good feeling walking with an umbrella when there was lightning literally every 10 seconds, but I made it to the school. I let her off the leash and felt like such a jerk jumping into the car and saying "go go go"... we started out of the parking lot and looking back, she was chasing us, which broke both of our hearts.
With the dog hot on our trail, I had Brooke take a long way back to the house by doubling back, heading down another road and reaching the house from the other way. We laughed because it felt like we were escaping an axe murderer.
We got home and were in the clear... Brooke of course could not sleep and was worried about the dog all night.
When morning came, Brooke decided to go search for her. She headed out in the car and about 5 minutes later showed back at home excited. "I found her" she said. She drove by the school and saw her in a yard, rolled the window down and said "mama" and her ears and tail went up and she chased the car back home to our house. So Brooke fed, watered, and pet her and waited until the vet opened to get the information.
As I was writing the last paragraphs, I got a call from Brooke that she had reached the owner and he was very excited and was going to pick her up in 10 minutes. They had searched all night for her.
Happy ending. We were relieved to see that that dog was actually loved and not just some outdoor dog someone didn't care about.
Next post will hopefully be all Olivia, but this was just too crazy not to share!!