What Are People Thinking?

I took 2 stray dogs to the humane society this morning. Cute little things, very friendly, quite overweight, one a sheltie mix, one a spaniel mix. Both terribly overweight. One recently spayed, still has stitches.

One was wearing a collar but had no tags. The other one had no collar. They almost got run over twice--once by me backing out of my driveway and once when they ran across the street to say hi to a man walking by, who checked them for tags and then turned them loose again. Someone else thought they recognized them and suggested some houses to try; I drove them there but no one recognized them. I walked them all around the neighborhood (a mile and a half), talking to people, hoping they'd be recognized or would take me to their home, but no such luck. Drove them to the local vet to get them scanned for microchips, but no such luck.

Dropped them off at the humane society in Santa Clara this morning. They hold them for 5 days for the owners and then put them up for adoption if there are no health or personality problems and they haven't been claimed.

Why don't people ID their dogs? I think I've ranted about this before. Yet another friend told me once when the dog got out of the yard that the dog never wore tags when unsupervised in the yard because they were afraid the dog would catch the collar on something and strangle to death. Let's see, how many dozens of stray dogs with no IDs have I taken to the pound? (OK, probably only about a dozen, really.) How many people do I know or have met whose dogs have been strangled in the yard while wearing a collar? None. I'm sure it happens. I've heard that that kind of accident is more common with slip collars, which I never would leave on my dog unsupervised.

And why do people let their dogs get so overweight? OK, now I know better... Amber and Sheba both put on weight when they got to be 8 or 9 or so, and it crept on so that I hardly noticed it, then realized one day, "gee! My dog is getting fat!" and then had to put them on a diet to get the weight off again.

It's not like I had 2 available hours to do this this weekend. Thanks, idiots whose dogs don't have IDs!

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