soul log

Every night, it is one of our long-held family traditions to go for a walk. It wasn’t written in some sort of coat of arms, it wasn’t a requirement, but my dad just liked going for a walk after dinner. As a result, because of his constant vigilance, we feel weird if we don’t go on the walk.

Even better than the walk would be a bike ride. My mom sometimes can’t stay at home very long, so when that happens, and it is just my dad and me, we like going for a nice bike ride. We usually take a ride around my school, then circle around back home the long way, and ride through a gorgeous park.

So today, I was riding down the street towards a trail behind our neighborhood when a dog suddenly started chasing my dad and I. To be more precise, that dog was chasing my dog Peanut, and he was scared into hysterics.

To clear some things up, my dog is not a bully. He can try to be a bully, but really, the only thing he manages to scare are squirrels and the frequent frog. When a cat prowls at him, he is so scared, he immediately runs away and cowers at the closest family member’s feet.

So when this dog came along, you can imagine how scared my dog was. He started running for dear life. The other dog, which was a bit larger than my dog, started chasing. They ran down the street, my dad frantically calling Peanut back, until Peanut stuck his head between my legs, leaving only a body on the other side for the other dog to sniff.

My dad tried to shoo the other dog away from Peanut, who was sniffing him away, and my dog trembling the whole time (I could feel it). I figured it might be a dog who was usually let out to play around, or maybe the owner was on a phone call and hadn’t noticed.

Then a lady came out. She was on the phone, and she grabbed the dog. We figured this dog might be hers, and we were predicting for her to tell us how sorry she was for bothering our poor dog when she hung up and promptly began looking for a dog tag.

“Now, puppy, where’s your owner?” she asked.

That caught us by surprise. This dog wasn’t the lady’s! It must be lost or something, for all I knew. We just stood there, stunned, watching this lady try to find the owner of a dog that she had never seen before.

“I find a lot of dogs back here,” she explained, while the dog, hyperactive or something, hung his tongue out, trying to squirm out of the lady’s grasp. Finally, she grabbed the tag.

“Dr. Pepper, aren’t you?” she chuckled, reading the tag. “Who’s your owner, Dr. Pepper?”

I would never name my dog after a soda drink.

The lady finally read to a phone number, and reached for her phone. She enunciated a bunch of numbers one at a time, but she couldn’t quite remember them fully, so I pulled out my phone and dialed for her. “You can call,” she told me.

I called, and called, and no one would pick up. She tried again, and her phone call went through.

“Yes, hello? … Have you lost your dog? … Oh, you have? … Yes, I have, in fact, found it. We’re waiting here on the corner of” (she said the corner at where we were standing) “okay? Does that work? … Okay, we’ll be waiting. Bye.”

She hung up. And we just stood there. Waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

Nobody came after five minutes. If this was my dog, I would definitely come at light speed, but nope, nobody.

I called again, and my phone call went through.

“Hello?” a lady’s voice answered.

“Yes, you lost your dog?”

“Yes, I lost my dearest Dr. Pepper.”

“Maim, we are waiting on the corner.” I recited where we were.

“I don’t even know where that place is.”

“Ma’am, do you—” I tried to ask here where she was right now so I could give her directions, but she didn’t hear me.

“My dearest Dr. Pepper, I just opened my door—”

“Ma’am—”

“—and she just shot straight out, yes she did, not a single glance at me, she did, chasing some random squirrel, I say.”

“Ma’am, where are you right now?”

She told me a place a few blocks away. “I’ve been standing here, waiting for you to deliver Dr. Pepper.”

Deliver? “Ma’am, can you come here to pick Dr. Pepper up? We are just a few blocks away.”

“But I can’t walk that far!”

“Can you drive here?”

“My daughter took my car.”

“Ma’am—”

“She just took it, said she had to go to work, she did.”

“Okay,” I said, finally reluctant. “We’ll take him there.”

“It’s a her.” I could feel her scowling.

“Bye,” I huffed, and hung up.

In the end, the kind lady decided to take her dog to the lady who had lost Dr. Pepper. What did we do? We rode away, marveling at how kind some people were.