THE BEGINNING - DAY ONE

It all started on Monday evening, July 13, 2009. I received a call from my friend, Claudia, and she started telling me about a dog she saw at a vacant business in San Bernardino, at the corner of Fifth Street and Tippecanoe. She told me the dog had been hanging at the business for about three weeks and she had been stopping and feeding him when she could. After a brief discussion about the dog, we made a decision to meet at the business before work the next morning.

The following morning, I arrived at the business a couple minutes before Claudia. I saw the dog and he was laying right in front of the front doors of the business called Ben's Transmission. At this time, he was sound asleep. I got out of my car and started to walk quietly towards him, but he heard me and woke up. He immediately got up and started walking towards the street. I started talking to him softly, and I had a couple hot dogs with me and immediately threw a couple pieces towards him. However, he kept walking toward the street and then got a few feet into the street and stood there, looking at me.

Claudia pulled up at this time, and I went over to her car and started talking to her. As we got further away from the dog, he then walked out of the street and back towards the building where he had been laying. Since it was clear he wasn't going to come anywhere near us, we left him some canned dogfood and some fresh water, along with some hotdogs, and then we both headed to work.

We both stopped to check on the dog later that day, after work. At this time, he was laying under a bush that was in front of the business. The bush provided a little shade, but not nearly enough to keep the dog cool. As he sat under the bush panting from the heat (it was in the triple digits), Claudia and I discussed what we should do about him. It was at this time that the dog got up and walked towards the street. We watched and literally cringed as he started crossing the street (in the crosswalk--smart dog!) and a bus started heading towards him. The bus did stop when it got right up to him, and he continued to the other side of the street, where he went and lied down in the grassy area of the Amopollo restaurant. He then started rolling in the grass!

As we were standing there watching the dog rolling in the grass, a lady pulled into the parking lot and started yelling at us. She was saying that we scared the dog and caused him to walk across the street and almost get hit by a bus. I tried to explain to her that the dog crossed the street to get to the cool grass, but she wouldn't listen and kept saying we had scared the dog and needed to stay away from him. I walked away from her and went to check on the dog's food and water, and Claudia kept talking to her. After a couple minutes, the lady then got in her car and left, and Claudia turned to me and briefly told me what she thought of her. (wink)

Since I noticed the dog had been sleeping on the concrete, I suggested that I could run home and get some blankets for him to sleep on, and we could come back and check on him later and bring them back for him. Claudia said that would be a good idea as she needed to get home to feed her dogs anyway.

We returned later, and the dog was still lying in the grass across the street. We watched him as he rubbed his head in the grass and then turned over and started rubbing his back on the grass. He seemed to really be enjoying himself. However, a couple minutes later, some young kids started heading in his direction, and at this time, the dog got up and headed across the street, in the opposite direction where we were. We watched him walk up the street a ways, at which time, he turned around and headed back in our direction. However, as he walked on the opposite side of the street from where we were, he proceeded to walk past us. He got past us a ways, and he then crossed back over to our side of the street but he did not head back in our direction. Instead, he laid down in the grassy area in front of a church.

We put the blankets on the ground in front of the doors where I had found him sleeping earlier that morning and then checked on his food and water. We waited to see if he'd come back to the parking lot area where we were, but he seemed content to lay in the grass where he was. We watched him for several minutes, and we both commented that sadly, he must have been dumped and was waiting for his master to return to pick him up.

We got in the car and headed up the street in his direction. As we drove past him, I was able to see that he was just laying with his head resting on his paws, waiting. We both commented how sad it was that someone could just dump a dog like him and leave him. We made the decision to return the next morning, and as we headed home, we both felt a heavy emptyness in our hearts, the same emptyness he probably felt in his.