Dora the Explorer

My RSI is bad today and the only thing that seems to help is walking so, after I’d taken Polly for her little one, I took myself off for a walk over the hill. About a quarter of the way round I met a couple coming towards me with two young Golden Retrievers on leads and an off-lead Whippet who came bounding over to say hello. The woman asked if I was the owner and it transpired that the dog was a lost one. We managed to get hold of her and get the phone numbers from her name disc, both of which I rang with no answer. I left messages and we decided to walk the dog back to the car park by which time, hopefully, the owner would have called back.

The woman led her by the collar as we had no spare leads but, after a while, the dog started getting a bit stressed, so I had the cunning idea to use my camera strap as a makeshift lead, which worked really well.

When we got back to the car park I was still not getting any response from the phone numbers so I rang the nearest vet and they said I could take her there to have her microchip checked and then, if necessary, we could ring the dog warden to come and get her. The other dog walkers helped me put the dog in the back of my car and I told them I’d be fine to take her the short distance to the vet, so off they went.

I then got a call from the landline number and it was an elderly lady who lives at the nearby private school who told me that the dog was called Dora and belonged to her son and daughter-in-law who live at the farm round the corner; she thanked me and said she’d be with me in five minutes. I then had a call from the mobile number, which was the daughter-in-law, who explained that someone must have left the farm gate open, allowing Dora to escape.

Anyway, all’s well that ends well. Dora’s grandmother came and collected her and, while we were waiting, we bonded a little and I got my blip for the day :)