I found a dog....

The following events actually happened. Nothing has been embellished. I swear, every single word is true. Honestly, file this under "you can't make this shit up".

Last Saturday I got into my car to run an errand and saw a small dog walking up my street. I live on a relatively busy street that leads to an even busier county road, read: lots of fast moving cars and idiot drivers. Not the safest place for a dog.

This is a dog. It's not the actual dog I found. I just needed a cute dog picture for the post. So sue me.

I sat in my car toying with the idea of getting out to see what the dog's deal was, or just going about my business and running my errand. Then I thought of my two dogs, Henry and Cosmo. If one of my dogs got out, I would hope that someone would take the time to make sure he didn't run into traffic, to make sure he was kept safe. So I got involved.

That was my first mistake.

I checked the dog for signs of ownership. No collar, no tags, no leash, no identifying marks. I brought the dog into my house and put it in my dog crate (I had my husband put our two boys outside so they didn't think I had brought them a chew toy). I posted the dog's picture on our HOA Facebook page alerting anyone who may be missing a dog to the fact that I had found one. Then I ran my errand.

When I got back, I checked the HOA Facebook page and saw no results, so I decided to check the dog to see if I could provide more details (male or female, coloring, age, etc). That's when I saw that this poor dog was infested with fleas and flea eggs. And it was sitting in my dog crate, with our blankets and our dog towels. Oh hell no. I treat my dogs for fleas with Frontline every month and I can't have an untreated dog infested with fleas in my house. No flipping way. So I called the local animal control office to make sure they were there on the weekend, and I got dressed, put the dog in a carrier and brought it to their office.

Let me make this perfectly clear: had this dog been flea-free, and not shown signs of infestation, I would have kept the dog all day, hoping that the owner could be located. However, that is not the case. This dog, this sweet innocent animal was crawling with fleas, and keeping it around my dogs was not an option.

Upon returning from the animal control office, someone messaged me that they knew who the owner was.

Then the owner saw my FB post on our HOA page and, I shit you not, accused me of stealing her dog.

You read that right. She said I stole her dog. But wait it gets better. These are literally, word for word, the posts she made on my Facebook post. Keep in mind, I found her dog. I made sure it did not get hit by a car. I could've just looked the other way and let someone else deal with it. But I didn't. This was the owner's response to my post. Each sentence was posted in a separate comment.

You can pay the $50 to pick her up

And I will file charges against you for stealing her I saw you drive off

They will not release her and I am coming to your house

!!!!!!!!!   (I'm not lying, that was an actual individual comment right there)

I just called 911

And I am waiting for the officer to call me

That's wrong what you did

And I don't have time for this (apparently she had time to post on FB over and over)

 I am filing a civil case.

You do not steal any pet !! And it's reported

I would shut your mouth !!

(someone posted here that I had done the right thing, the owner responded below)

No let someone steal your dog

See how you react

These people have nothing better to do pretty sad

It was wrong and it's been reported I wont drop it I will do what I have to  !!

Ok so here's the deal. Had the owner spent money on proper care of the dog (ie flea meds), she wouldn't have had to bail her dog out of doggie lockup.

I always try to teach my children to do the right thing. To make good choices and to help others if you are able. And yet, I thought I was doing the right thing, and it came back to bite me in the ass.

Did I do the wrong thing by taking the dog to animal control? Would you have kept a flea-infested animal around your animals? In your flea-free house? Or am I the bad guy here. I'd love to know what you think.

If you liked this post, perhaps you'll enjoy reading about the time I found something on Henry that no dog should have.

Long Live the Schlepprocks!

In my hood, we have a wide variety of personalities. Some nice, some warm and fuzzy, some prickly, some tangy, just like a big grocery store full of dispositions. We've got plenty of fruits and nuts, some twigs and berries, we've got it all. And it's a pretty decent mix, except for the rotten bananas. You know the ones I'm talking about, the kind who travel around with a black cloud of doom hanging over their head, much like Schlepprock from the old Flintstones cartoons. Wherever Schlepprock goes, he brings a gloomy darkness and bad things happen. Yeah, we've got one of those as well.

This is the type of person who frequently pees in your cornflakes in the morning. For the sake of anonymity and originality, we'll call our Schlepprock 'Schlepprock'. Our neighborhood Schlepprock takes pride and pleasure in the misery of others. If you're having a sunny day, fear not, old Schlepprock will come to your house and rain on your sunny day. Or try to if you allow it. But the key is NOT to allow it. You see, our Schlepprock is a lone wolf in a pack of happy puppies. And we happy puppies need not let our Schlepprock bring us down.

Let's take a look at some examples of our Schlepprock in action. Our Schlepprock enjoys making the ideas of others seem somehow wrong. Several of our neighbors toyed with the idea of sharing resources to save money in these difficult times and brought up the idea of possibly pitching in to share in garbage collection. Several other like-minded opinions were shared, yet Schlepprock poo-poo'ed these ideas, suggesting instead that we all just buy one big house and live together. When another sweet neighbor suggested that with the high cost of oh, I don't know, EVERYTHING these days, it sounds like we could ALL benefit from pitching in and that even dual-income households are scrambling to make ends meet. Well, apparently this is not the case at Casa Schlepprock. Schlepprock's spouse apparently makes plenty o'bucks so that Schlepprock can stay home and take care of the little Schlepprocks. I applaud Schlepprock's spouse and their ability to manage on one income but the idea of a two-income household is a ridiculous theory to Schlepprock. No, Schlepprock looks down from their high horse upon those of us who all have to go out and do all that nasty stuff called work. Ew. Schlepprock replied to this sweet neighbor by suggesting that said sweet neighbor wasn't home often enough to be a good mother to her own children. Yes, THAT little nugget pissed more than a few neighbors off.

More recently, we had another little conversation going about the positives and negatives of HOA's. This is a hot button topic among all neighbors, and all involved have valid points of view. Even Schlepprock. However, as someone famous once said (and no, don't ask me who, because I don't know. It could've been someone who works for UPS or FedEx, but don't quote me. Maybe it was Mr. McFeely from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, he was the postman, wasn't he? Anyway, I digress) it's all in the delivery. Delivery is key. It's all about delivery. You deliver your point of view in a grown up, respectful manner and your opinion is treated with the respect it deserves. You deliver your opinion like an ass, and that's the way you'll be treated. Watch your words. If you tell someone that you like the HOA because you don't want to live with a dirt ball mentality, and if you want to live with a dirt ball mentality, go move to a trailer park, then you are going to be challenged. And if you backpedal and say there was no name calling, then you're obviously suffering from short term memory loss and you should immediately change your name to Dorrie and go find a whale to have a chat with in your quest to find Nemo. And if you FURTHERMORE refer to someone as a bitch because they ask you to tone down the name calling, you deserve any ass-whooping that comes your way.

We all know people like this. They are everywhere in every community, hiding in the woodwork like cockroaches. They piss us off and then act innocent. Their opinion is much greater and much more important than yours. Their spouse is better than yours, their milkshakes bring all the boys to the yard. I say good for them. Long live the Schlepprocks, for if they disappear, it'll make it harder for me to unleash my snark. And it's not good for the snark to be locked up for too long. One must not bottle up the snark. So thank you, Schlepprocks of the world! Because of you, I'm never at a loss for a good topic for a blog post.

I'm on HuffPost!!!!!!

Happy Saturday, Snarklings! I brought back an oldie but goodie that I wrote when this little blog was back on Tumblr. Now I'm here on Blogger and I submitted this post to the Huffington Post and it's published!

So come revisit my post Long Live the Schlepprocks and leave me a comment over there. As always, thanks so much for always being such loyal and awesome readers, friends and family!!!