Yeeeeeeah,  in retrospect it was probably stupid.

I was walking down the street to pick up my daughter from school.  Up the street I hear the sounds of dogs going at it, so I stop and take a look.  There’s a longhaired lady with two dogs tussling at her feet.  Now, I thought they were both her dogs, but I stopped and checked it out for a second.  I had about a minute before I had to be at the schoolyard.

Except the lady turns out to be much older, and she’s flailing about with a cane yelling “Get off him, get off.  Help me help me help me!”

So I set off at a run.  It’s a couple of blocks away and the dogs are still going.  As I get closer I can see her hair, down past her shoulder is *white*.  So she’s certainly older than I’d thought, and I can now see one of the dogs is some sort of Shepard mix.  Big dog.  Had they been punt-dog sized this might have been simpler as long as I didn’t mind a bit of broken skin.  A bigger dog will require something else.  Aaaaaaaand I got nothin’ useful on my person.  Because I *was* heading to pick up my kid.

When I get there after a minute, someone else has pulled over and is blaring his horn.  Someone else pulls up, a gardener from down the block and he pulls out a big stick.  The dogs break up pretty quick and the Big Dog trots away with that springy step that means he’s having fun.  He is a BEAUTIFUL dog.  Well groomed, well fed.  He’s got that happy stance that means he’s excited, but not nutzo.  If you’ve hung around dogs for a while, you’d recognise what I mean.  He’s without a collar, clearly lost and probably just high on the experience of being out of a postage-stamp sized backyard for the first time.

So, lamely enough.  I yelled GO HOME at the dog.  He looked at me, I looked at him.  He came over, game me a quick sniff, gave someone else a quick sniff, then headed home.  The problem was, the homeowners wouldn’t open the door for him.  In fact, they just watched through the window.  I know they were the owners because, when I passed back that way, they left the front door open a bit for the dog to come in.  The dog stopped in the walkway and stared at the house, then rounded the house like he was looking for another way in.   I can’t blame them for being afraid, in the minds of about half the people there, the dog had just savaged another dog (though the other dog seemed to have been unharmed after all the sturm und drang) and I’m sure the homeowners would have been (or already have been) reported to the police.  Someone said animal control got called as well.

So it’s a zero sum game on the karma scale.  I ran up to help the little old lady, but I wasn’t really able to do anything to help the dog, who is probably going to be abandoned by the owners to Animal Control. 

Crap.