While walking in front of my home in Vancouver's Olympic Village on Monday, I came across a strange sight. This dog dressed in designer jeans and a bedazzled t-shirt:
I say he looked strange partly because of his sweet human gear, but also because his owner was nowhere to be found. When I came across him he'd been following a lady down the street for a couple blocks and she assured me that the dog wasn't hers, so I took it upon myself to gather him up and find his owner. After coaxing him with some treats I brought him inside and got to work as my own dog freaked out whining as he tends to do when new dogs are introduced to our home.
I posted the photo above to our Facebook Page captioned with "Do you know this dog? We just found him wandering around the Olympic Village. We need to find his owner!", and I sent a tweet out with similar messaging. The Facebook post was shared 199 times, the tweet RTd 49 times, and less than an hour later the owner had been alerted by their friends that I had their dog; they had seen him pop up on our Facebook and let her know he was safe. Then the dog's owner somehow found my cell number (I'm still not sure how) and gave me a ring, and minutes later I had returned the dog to her. She obviously cares about this guy a lot, and she was practically in tears upon their being reunited.
I learned a few things from the experience. One is that social media can be a great tool (but we already knew that), two that the dog's name is Mau Mau (that might not be the right spelling), three that he escaped from a nearby office when somebody left the door open, and four that a lot of our Facebook followers thought it was a little... unusual... that he was wearing clothes on such a hot day. My response is that he's an office dog. He spends his day inside a chilled environment, and I'm not sure if the owner always has him full clothed but, well, if he wasn't dressed the way he was he may not have been spotted so quickly and returned to his owner. And maybe he gets a little warm. Big deal. My dog is a nudist and yours may be too, but there are always different strokes for different folks.
Oh, and a couple other things. This response to the Facebook post was THE BEST:
And here's another angle of Mau Mau. He's really, really cute and the thought of his owner maybe not claiming him and us getting to keep him definitely came to mind. Thanks to everyone who RTd and Shared our posts about this, you are the reason this story has a happy ending.
