Paws-itive Kindness

by Janna Lopez

Every once in a while, someone does something so incredibly kind, it counts as a huge deposit to the bank account belonging to faith-in-humanity. Especially when the kindness derives from a total stranger.

Here’s how a story of total goodness unfolded: My boyfriend Mark and his 16-year-old daughter Shelby recently moved in with my family. They previously lived in Forest Grove. With them came a sweet, not-quite-2-year-old border collie named Skeezix. She’s one of the smartest, nicest dogs I’ve met. She was also used to the country. Skeez (as she is fondly called) has adjusted pretty well, though living in the city is certainly a different frame of reference for a country dog.

One morning I noticed it was a bit quiet in my house and I hadn’t heard her paw nails tapping against the hardwood floor when she walked around. Since one of our kids occasionally lets her out for potty breaks or playtime, I went to the backyard to see if Skeez was in the yard. She was not. With one last, vast sweep indoors and around the back, panic ensued as I realized she was nowhere to be found. I let Shelby know that I believed Skeez had somehow gotten out of the yard.

Not knowing how long she’d been gone, we hopped in the car and started to drive around the immediate neighborhood. Calling her name, no signs of Skeez became apparent. I was fearful because we live near an extremely busy street. A country dog would have no sense of traffic, cars or crossing busy streets.

Though I hated to do it and hoped I’d find her without incident, I called Mark at work to tell him that Skeez was missing. I could hear the worry in his voice. Mark has huge love for his dog. I wanted to reassure him that I would do everything I could to find her. But he was still just as panicked as we were, if not worse. Since he was at work, he felt helpless.

Thoughts ran through my head of the less-than-pleasant outcomes of a wandering, lost country dog in the throes of a busy, strange city, away from the home she’d always known. I so wanted this transition of moving in together to be smooth, with us as a couple, with our kids together, and the integration of our lives; this included their dog, my cats and ensuring an escape-proof yard. Though an escaped dog wasn’t my fault per se, I felt incredibly responsible.

The panic became more pronounced as these thoughts overtook me. Shelby and I decided that for maximum coverage, we’d split up to look for Skeez. Shelby would go by bike, I’d continue by car. Over the last few weeks we’d taken Skeez by a nearby school to throw the ball around. I knew Skeez was familiar with the route to the school. Though we’d already checked the school in our initial search, I thought I’d go back. But I also thought that if Skeez had been out for a long time, she might have had enough time to go past the school and into the neighborhood beyond.

I drove beyond the school and turned down a smaller street. Driving slowly, I noticed a man watering his lawn. I pulled up beside him and asked him if by some chance he’d seen a wandering dog? He told me that a while ago a woman had spotted a dog and had gotten a leash to secure it. He then said she was walking around the neighborhood, somewhere, trying to find the owner. A surge of hope washed over me. A short distance later, I turned right onto another street.

In the distance, at the very end of the street, was a woman with her child, and on a leash was Skeezix! I was thrilled and relieved beyond belief. I started to cry because I knew how much that dog meant to Mark and Shelby and how devastated I would have been if something terrible had happened. The woman told me she’d been walking around with Skeez for hours looking for the owner—that she knew how the owner must feel, and would have been terribly upset if something had happened to her own dog.

I could barely find the right words to thank her for her kindness. I tried to say thanks as best as I could, but it didn’t seem like enough. I wasn’t sure how to express my complexity of thoughts and feelings of gratitude. I felt grateful not just because Skeez was back with us, or that we had a wonderful outcome to a situation that could have been awful. What I wanted to tell her was that this intersection of our lives had given me a truly invaluable gift: the realization that the world was comprised of incredibly selfless, kind people, who go out of their way to help others, even if they are strangers.

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