Ding Dong Ditch Dog

I've heard of leaving a baby on someone's door step, but a dog? Hester called me at work to tell me that someone had left a dog on our doorstep. It happened sometime between me leaving for work that morning and Hester going out to check the mail that afternoon. Since Hester has wanted a dog since we've been married, I naturally began to wonder if she staged an elaborate hoax to persuade me into keeping a dog. After some reassurance I finally believed her and laughed at our situation. She took care of the dog until I got home after work that evening.

Before I arrived home, Hester had done a little investigating into where this dog could have come from. Oddly there was a bag with all sorts of dog grooming paraphernalia along with vet paperwork. After calling the vet clinic on the paperwork, Hester discovered the dog had belonged to a woman who had passed away 2 months earlier. The vet clinic wasn't sure who acquired the dog after her passing. Hester did a Google search and found the woman's obituary, which listed a dozen relatives or so. After Googling the relatives, she finally found one of them on Facebook. The woman's profile was set to public so she was able to message her.

On the way home from work I picked up a $3.00 bag of dog food at the grocery store. When I got home, I too rummaged through the bag and found the dog collar which had an address on it. The address was only a half mile way from our location. Could someone really have been so stupid to have ditched a dog on our doorstep along with documents tracing the animal back to them? We took a little ride that evening to confront the possible dog ditcher.

We arrived at the address and I knocked on the door while Hester waited in the car, ready to call for backup if things got intense haha. A man answered the door and asked what he could do for me. I proceeded to ask him if he owned a dog and whether the dog was missing or not. He informed me that he did have a dog but that he thought it was home. He clapped a few times and called for his dog, only to be answered by complete silence. He had a smirk on his face, almost as though he knew he had been caught and felt embarrassed at this ridiculous attempt at acting surprised. But to my amazement a few seconds later, the tinniest dog I've ever seen pranced onto the front porch and danced at his owner's feet. "There she is" he replied.

I told him our situation and he was as surprised as I was. He informed me that his landlord had purchased the house from a woman who passed away. I assumed the color had been on the dog since before she passed. We were still no closer to solving our mystery and finding the perpetrator. When we got home, Hester gave Jeanne a bath and we put her to bed. We decided to search the local white pages and found a few more possible addresses and phone numbers. Of the few we called, no one answered but we left messages.

By noon the next day, no one had returned our phone calls. Hester did some more digging on the woman's facebook profile she had messaged the day before and found a mention of where she worked. Hester called her work and left yet another message. By that afternoon she finally got a call back. The woman was very confused as to why Hester had contacted her. Hester proceeded to explain what had happened and the woman was shocked. She apologized and informed Hester she would talk to the rest of her family and give her a call back. Soon the phone rang and Hester was informed that the boyfriend of a family member who was in charge of taking care of their deceased loved one's dog had decided to get rid of it. He had decided to leave it with his girlfriends relatives who happened to live in our House before we purchased it this year. He made no attempt to contact them to let them know that he would be dropping the dog off and he apparently knew they no longer lived at that address. Needless to say the rest of the family was pretty upset.

By that evening we receieved a phone call from the woman who had previously owned our house before selling it to the contractor who we purchased the house from. She left a tearful message on Hester's phone thanking us for taking care of the dog. Later that evening her husband came by after work and picked up the dog and our quest to find out the back story of how this dog ended up on our doorstep was over. We were worried that we'd have to list her on craigs list or take her to a shelter if someone didn't claim her but thankfully we stuck with it and got her back home.

Side Note: The man who caused the whole ordeal in the first place later left a thank you card with $25 in it for our troubles. We were just happy to have found Jeanne's family but we appreciated the gesture none the less.