3 legs and a whole lot of attention needs.......

I was working on putting some baby furniture together when I happened to look out the window. It was still cold outside from the winter storm that blew through our area. Walking down the sidewalk was a 3-legged dog. It appeared to be a bit lost. Mrs. Lime wanted to go down and check the dog's collar. She'd open an animal shelter in our home if I ever let her.

We went out and I whistled at the dog and told it to come over. It was very happy to see us and she immediately wanted her tummy rubbed. I got the number off the collar and gave it a call. I only got the answering machine, but it did have a phone number to call the vet directly. I did that and spoke with the vet. I explained that I had a German Shepard mix with 3 legs that I had found wandering the street. He immediately knew who owned the dog because he didn't care for that many 3-legged German Shepard mix dogs.

He knew the name of the owner, but he was in the Denver Airport and couldn't give me a contact number. I told him that I was in the north part of town and that puzzled him because the dog owner lived in the south part of town, roughly 25-30 miles away. So we were confused as to how the dog got up north. The vet said that his office would open in the morning, so he couldn't do much other than suggest calling his office in the morning. He also said we could drop off the dog at the vet hospital nearby tonight and that they could get the dog back to the owners in the morning.

We brought the dog in and gave it a couple of treats. It was very well behaved around our dog and sat to get a treat, so we knew it was an well-treated dog. She tried to make herself at home on the couches, but we kept her from doing that. Even then, she listened well. I made the executive decision to take her to the vet hospital (after alleviating my wife's unfounded fears that they would put the dog to sleep overnight) and look for her owners on the way out of the neighborhood. Honestly, I think my wife wanted to keep the dog, which wasn't going to happen under any circumstance anyway.

We drove around the circle and saw our home builder out in the neighborhood. He knows everyone in the area, so we asked him if he knew anyone who owned a 3-legged dog. He initially thought we were making a joke, but then quickly realized we were serious when he saw, strangely enough, a 3-legged dog enjoying a ride in our back seat. He suggested that it might be a house up in the neighborhood, so we drove off to give that a try.

I started looking for Kansas license plates in the neighborhood, thinking that someone might be visiting up north and happened to lose track of their dog. We saw a Kansas license plate in one of the driveways and so we stopped and Mrs. Lime went to knock on the door. Moments later, she came back out and gave the signal. We had found the dog's owners. Turns out that her name was Millie and she was very happy to be back home. The owners didn't even know that she was outside. A happy ending for our first 3-legged dog search and rescue.