Mission Gone A-Stray

Ever since coming to the nation of Texas, my madre and I have been all excited to go see the famous Spanish missions along the San Antonio river. Yet here we are, over a month later, still lacking in historical significance. Because. Every time we plan to go, someone is stricken ill. Or Nature bars us with flooding rain. Or a plague of locusts eats the wheels off the car!*
Fate seemed to have a problem with our big plans. So one day, we banded together with Little One and said, "Fate, forget you man! We are totally ignoring you and doing our own thing! We give you the what-eva hand, Fate!" And we made it our mission to go see the missions. We almost made it 3/4 of the way. When Fate stepped up with the A-game.
I saw some cars get all swervy off to the right there. My mom did not see this (focusing on the road and all that), so it was an enormous vote of confidence that when I shrieked, "MOM! STOP! Stop the car!!" in the middle of a four-lane freeway, she actually did it. Thanks mom! Your utter faith in my rash decisions is both flattering and slightly scary!
What happened was that between a bumper and a fender, a little flash had caught my eye. A little flash of a tail. I hopped out and there it was, attached to an absolutely terrified pit bull, dodging trucks and sedans with an equally petrified husky puppy. Well, Peanuts. What were we supposed to do? Let them get made into puppy pancakes? Lucky for all of us, these two were the friendliest, loviest pups I have ever picked up on the side of the road (which is saying something, I'm afraid).
As soon as I called them, they literally leaped with joy across two lanes into my lap. I do not speak fluent Dog. But I am fairly sure I heard them saying "oh thank goodness! oh thank goodness! that was reallyreallyreallyreally scary! Please can I come with you! Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease!" I grabbed the spare leash I keep in my car for these occasions and roped them in, calm them down, and gave my mom my very, very best "Puh-leeeeeese???" face. It worked!
One had a collar on, with a phone number, but no one answered my 15 calls. So I looked at mom. She looked at me. We looked at the panting, wagging piles of mud in the hatch. They looked at Little One. Who said, "Dah-g! Dah-g! Heeeeeheeeeteeehee!" And we shook our heads and our fists and said, "Fine, Fate. Fine. You win again." And we drove aaaall the way accross town to the humane society.
Who were nice enough to check if anyone had reported them missing (nope), but who absolutely, positively, could not, would not even think of deigning to accept a pit bull. Even though it was so clearly the sweetest creature ever, even though it was the one with tags, including vaccination tags. And, they informed me, it was all very nice that they were not my dogs, and they were sure I was in a pickle having no where to put them but my trunk and all, but, if I left them there, they would have to consider it animal dumping and have me arrested. Wow. That is so humane! What a benevolent little society you've got there. Halos all around!
So. Waggly mud piles back in the car. We drove aaaaalll the way across town in the other direction to the only place open that would accept a pit bull- the county pound.
Now. When we lived in AZ, I volunteered for a long time in the county pound. I know what goes on there. I asked and learned that in San Antonio, the pit would get five days of shelter because he had a collar and a tag. After that, he would get dispatched. The baby husky, because she had no collar and no tags, would get 2 days. Two!
I have a lot of trouble with this. Surely two days is better than being smashed to death immediately, but.....well not by that much. But I was pretty sure that dogs that trusting of strangers, with such clean teeth (you can tell so much about dogs and kids by their teeth) must belong to someone who was looking for them. So while they processed the intake papers, I stalked the heck out of the phone number on that tag.
And thankfully, Fate finally threw us all a bone, and my phone finally rang back. 30 minutes later Rocco and Mia were back with their person, the person was hugging me, and my mom and Little One were waving bye-bye to our new friends.



I just LOVE a happy ending, don't you?!
One mission down. One to go.

*ok, maybe not that last one, exactly.