Friday ended up being quite an adventure filled day.
It started out like any other, hanging out with friends in the lounge, deciding what we were going to to that day. All of a sudden, in bursts our friend Reed Glover, with this big guy!
Meet Gandalf. He literally ran into Reed on the street when she was taking a walk, but had no identification other than the Home Again tag on his collar. Reed ended up standing on the street corner in the rain for a half hour trying to get a hold of the dog’s owner. She called the Home Again service and gave them his ID number, but when they tried to reach the phone number they had on file for him, it was disconnected! They told her his name was Gandalf, and gave her the number for the local Humane Society.
When she tried calling, she discovered it was closed for the day. So, she decided to bring her new friend back to campus and out of the rain until she could figure out what to do.
Now, people often walk their dogs around the Puget Sound campus and the students love it, and this was no exception! Soon, we had a group of helpers working to towel off Gandalf and give him some water and LOTS of love.
Drying off our furry friend
Once we’d given him a chance to calm down and dry off, we helped Reed devise a plan to get him back where he belonged. She and another friend of ours, Paul Goudarzi-Fry, decided to walk back down where Reed originally found him and knock on some doors to see if anyone knew of or had lost a dog, while I stayed behind and kept him company.
I mean…look at that face
Once they’d found some neighbors who recognized pictures of the dog and said the owner wasn’t home, Reed and Paul came back to campus and we set out once again to drop Gandalf off with the neighbors until the owner came home. But, on our way there, a woman drove by with her window rolled down and yelled, “THAT’S MY DOG! OH MY GOSH I LOVE YOU GUYS!!” After much cheering and horrahs, we followed her car and found Gandalf’s true home. Turns out she’d just gotten back from the Humane Society looking for him!
She was ecstatic to have him back and couldn’t stop thanking us. She explained that the number out of service belonged to her husband, who was in the army, and offered to let us come visit Gandalf whenever we wanted. Full of a warm fuzzy feeling and with uncontrollable smiles, we said our goodbyes to Gandalf and walked a few blocks to a coffee shop to take a rest. We’d all made a new friend (especially Reed!).
Reed and her new best friend!
So what did I do this weekend? I met Gandalf. And he took us on a very unexpected journey.
A striking resemblance, wouldn’t you say?