At our house, in addition to Mom and Dad and the two kids, we also have 3 cats and 2 dogs. Like most dogs, ours do not like thunderstorms.
We live in a nice neighbourhood that happens to be relatively close to where our local NHL hockey team has their practice facilities, so quite a few of the players live nearby.
One of these players is an all-star goaltender that we will call “Larry Nice”. He is also the owner of a couple of dogs, which I know since I follow him on Twitter, where he recently posted a photo of his two pals.
I volunteer at a Montreal charity called Share the Warmth, and can usually be found there on Thursday afternoons when we give out boxes of food to the local folks. When I leave the house on those days my wife will often say “Have fun sharing your warmth today”.
During the food bank, we give out pet food when we have it, but we ran out a few months ago and have had to say “Sorry, we don’t have any this week”, when people asked.
I recently contacted someone I knew who worked for Hagen, a local pet food manufacturer, and through her and Hagen’s generosity, we finally managed to have lots of dog food on hand for a change.
So on a recent Thursday, I was “sharing my warmth” and we were giving out lots of dog food, probably more than we should have, since it had been so long and we really had quite a bit of inventory for a change. At the same time, storm clouds were brewing (literally).
Back at home, the dogs were in the backyard. The one who usually freaks out during storms has been known to break through or dig his way out from under our fence. It is for this reason that I got him a dog tag with my cell phone number and address on it.
The people coming in for food were dripping wet from the rain. I am hoping that the bit of thunder that I heard in Montreal did not mean that my dogs were getting scared in the yard.
At about 2 o’clock, my phone rang. The guy on the other end told me he had my dog. He said he could meet me at a nearby parking lot and give him back to me. I explained that I couldn’t get away and my best-case scenario would be to meet him in about 20 minutes.
Then the nice man noticed our address on the dog tag and offered to bring him back home. I said, yes, please, and thank you, and informed him that there would be another dog there waiting for his vagabond buddy.
I got home a couple of hours later and found both dogs safe, sound, and quite dirty. Later I sat back and checked my Twitter timeline to see what I had missed during the day.
What’s this I see? “Larry Nice” has tweeted that he “picked up a fugitive today”, with a link to a photo that he posted.
Curious, I clicked on the link, and almost fell off my chair when I saw my dog in the back seat of Larry’s Ford pick-up. Thanks Larry, for a story that I have already told quite a few times, and will continue to share. The dogs sure hope you never get traded, especially not to the Lightning.
