Something To Keep In Mind When Searching For a Lost Dog

Growing up in the early 2000’s, I saw many stories on the news about kids being abducted. At school, they preached the importance of not talking to strangers. Because of all this. my greatest fear when I was about six or seven years old was being kidnapped. I thought for sure some windowless van would pull up while I was playing outside and some middle-aged creep would ask if I would help him find his lost dog. From what I had been told, that was a kidnapper’s favorite way of stealing a youngster.

Now, as an adult, I think about what I was taught from a different perspective: all of this don’t talk to strangers propaganda really complicates things when you actually have to find a lost dog.

           
You’re in a bad mood because someone left the door open, the dog ran outside, and he won’t listen to you because you were too lazy to invest any time in training him. You hop in your car and try to figure out which way the dog went. You take a guess and start looking to see if anyone is around who may have seen the dog. There’s one person: an eight-year-old girl playing in her drive way (well, not hers. I’m assuming the driveway actually belongs to her parents. She just gets to use it.) You’ve got to find that damn dog, but those old videos from elementary playback in your head. Now, instead of seeing yourself as the child, you’re in the roll of the middle-aged creep, complete with his weird seventies mustache, bad glasses, and t-shirt tucked into pants that are pulled up way too high. Regardless, there’s a chance she may have seen your dog. You get ready to ask her, but since you don’t know her name you realize you were about to call her “little girl.” Your own skin crawls at how creepy that would sound. There has to be a better option. You consider asking the girl if her mother is home; maybe she saw the dog. No! That’s a bad start too. This is getting to be too much to take. You consider driving home and abandoning the search. You’d rather buy a new dog than find yourself watching the evening news with your family, only to see a police sketch of yourself appear on screen. That wouldn’t be cool. Try explaining your way out of that one: Yes, that sketch of the man police are looking for in connection with an attempted child abduction is clearly of me, and also that is the exact make and model of my car and it’s got my license plate, but hear me out!

You pull into your driveway and glance at your front door. Sitting there is your dog. Everything worked out in the end. All is well, and you didn’t inadvertently wind up on a wanted flyer at the post office.