Bloodhound Gang

I'm going to tell you a story but I'm going to do it in a round-a-bout kind of way becaue that's the way I been tellin' stories all my life. Here I am entering my mid thirties and I already got the story tellin' style of a retiree. Perhaps it has something to do with growing up around a lot of old folks. Right up until I entered high school I would spend a portion of each day around old folks. Even in high school I spent a lot of time around folks older than me though they weren't old folks. But I think old folks tend to draw out their stories because they have reached a stage where they realize they've only got a limited number of stories to tell, they aren't collecting new experiences to relate to people, so they have to talk about the weather or tell the old tales. By drawing out the story to as long as they can they reduce the probability of repeating themselves and finding they've run out of stories to tell. Which is a very interesting format for story telling and I often find myself incorporating that style.

So it all began in aught seven when one night while I was at work a neighbor woke my wife by pounding on the door. A few days prior she had met my smell hound Grounds Keeper Willy. We just call him Willy, sometimes Will. The idea was that we could just call him W when we were mad at him and punishing him. It never worked out that way so primarily he's just called Willy. Apparently this neighbor gal of ours thought that Willy was far too fat for his age. So much so that in the middle of the night she decided to come over and plead with my wife to let her walk my Willy. Now Willy, being a Bloodhound, is a rather large dog. About 150 lbs. large. Which is probably close to what this gal weighed. So she in her drunken state was not going to be able to walk my Willy. Not that we would have let her anyway. And what is up with some neighbor offering to walk your dog because she thinks he's fat and needs the exercise for health reasons? Does she go up to the parents of fat children and offer to take their kids for walks? Where was I? So anyway, needless to say my wife was fairly upset by the whole affair and decided that the solution was for me to walk my Willy every day to prevent further interruptions in her sleep patterns by crazy drunken neighbor gals wanting to get their hands on my big fat Willy.

That all happened a month ago. Since then I've been taking my Willy out every morning after work, letting him peruse the neighborhood, and watching as he marks every tree we come across. So this morning we leave through the side gate as always, Willy sniffs his way to the rose bushes and pees on them. Then he sniffs around the yard until he sniffs his way to the crab apple tree and pisses on that. Then it was off to the park. Normally we would have crossed over to the park side of the street to continue our walk, but this morning somebody was out walking their dog and coming towards us via the park. Willy is extremely territorial and a coward. When he meets other dogs he will challenge them with a deep and frightening woof and then jumps behind me just in case the other dog accepts the challenge. So rather than deal with a possible confrontation, we took a left turn and walked down the north side of the street that we would usually walk on the south side of.

Ahead of us on that side of the street we spotted a neighbor of ours getting into a mini-van. Typically Willy doesn't take much interest in people or vehicles unless they are in his immediate vicinity. Except for large trucks with air brakes. Air brakes scare the bejesus out of him. So it seemed a little odd that Willy was so interested in the neighbor up ahead of us.

But never mind all that because it was starting to rain. I wanted to get this walk done and over with so I could shower and go to bed. So we cross the street to the little park. As usual Willy is sniffing just about everything and marking every tree as personal property. But about half way through the park he stops with his nose on something. Just another section of sidewalk to most of us. I dragged him away from the spot and tried to continue our walk. As we reached the other end of the park, a young school girl smiled at my Willy on her way to class. A few paces later my dog stopped, had his nose in the air, and turned back towards our house.

I've never bothered to train my dog to walk properly on a leash. I'm an anarchist and for the most part I let him be one as well. This isn't typically an issue. He has learned to come with me where I am heading and I have learned to walk faster to keep him from pulling too much on the leash. After all, my Willy is huge with a mind of its own. Why fight it? So when he got the idea that we needed to head back towards the house now, I decided to go with it. At first I thought he was just extremely interested in the girl who had smiled at him, but he did not chase that direction.

The whole two blocks back he is practically dragging me along, his nose to the ground. He is also hurriedly remarking all the trees he previously marked and quickly leaving a little scent on just about anything else that sticks up out of the ground. But it isn't like his usual marking habits. This is controlled, precise, and quick. At the last street crossing I can't http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifeven hold him back as I check for danger. 150 lbs. is a whole lot of Willy.

Across the street and only half a block from home, he doesn't bother to pee on the one bush in the neighborhood that he typically seems intent to mark heavily. Instead he follows his nose straight to something sitting in my front lawn.

At first I'm elated. I see a wad of bills with a 20 spot showing. Good dog! As I reach down to pick it up I find that there is also a pair of keys and a debit card with the owner's photo on it. In this modern world of ours it wouldn't be at all uncommon to just take the cash and dispose of the other items. But that isn't the kind of world I would like to live in. I figured it was my duty to try and find the owner of these items. After all, I had a name and a picture. So I let my Willy loose in the yard and grab him a treat for tracking down the treasure. He has never shown any inclination towards tracking and since we are both anarchists, I've never tried to force the issue. But he is a Bloodhound. Just as sometimes my Viking lineage takes over my senses, sometimes a smell hound just does what comes naturally.

I grab the phone book and start looking for the person listed on the card. No luck there. So I use an online telephone directory figuring that it might be more up to date since the apartment complex next to us tends towards having a fairly high turn over rate. Still no luck. The only people I find with the same first and last name who live within the area are in Tigard, Beaverton, and St. Helens, pretty far out. The time had come for my last resort. I called the bank listed on the card. I look up the bank online and call the first 800 number listed. After trying to navigate the automated system which has no option for a non-customer trying to report finding a lost credit card, I finally get a person on the other end of the line. I tell him the situation and when he learns that it is actually a debit card, he transfers me to another automated system for dealing with debit card customers. Once again there are no appropriate options and after several attempts at yelling into the phone, "I WANT NONE OF THESE OPTIONS!" I decide to hang up and try the 800 number on the back of the card. I call this one and get put into another completely different automated system that is not giving me the options I want. This time I decide to try and use a different approach in the voice activated system. "GODDAMN MOTHER FUCKER PISS CUNT SHIT!" It is still not responding and threatens to discontinue the call if I do not make a selection. So I hang up and try one more time. This time I somehow get through to a live person and explain how my Bloodhound sniffed out one of their customer's debit cards and how there were other items with the card and would it be possible to perhaps leave contact info with the representative so I could return these items to the person. She goes so far as to contact the individual and put them on conference call with me so I can give him my phone number and he can call me back.

Turns out the owner was the guy who Willy had taken interest in as he got into a mini-van this morning. Last night he was at a concert and lost his wallet on the way home, most likely two blocks over. When I mentioned my Bloodhound he knew exactly who I was. "You live right around the corner from me!" He insisted that I take $20 from the wad of cash and asked if I could seal the rest in an envelope and put it in his mailbox, which I was only too happy to do. In one of Robert Anton Wilson's books he describes an experiment where a person should spend all of their time thinking about quarters, then go for a walk and see how many quarters they find. Other people I've talked to have had amazing results with the exercise. Not me. But every so often I find a $20 right under my nose. Or in this case, under my Willy.

Here's my theoretical reconstruction. Willy caught the scent as we started our walk. He matched the scent as we came upon our neighbor and it made him curious. In the park he caught the scent again at a spot where people notoriously cut across the grass. That's where I'll usually cut across if I decide not to stick to sidewalks. As we reached the other end of the park, he realized the trail was back there somewhere and dragged me along.

And I don't feel good because I did the right thing. There is no right and wrong. I acted in a manner consistent with the kind of world I want to live in. I helped to shape my own reality. The guy lost his wallet and the best he could hope for was to not become a victim of identity theft. Instead the dirty punk on the other end of the block returned what he found and kept the well deserved reward offered to him. It would have been just as appropriate and guilt free for me to destroy the debit card, toss the keys, and keep the cash. Especially after being repeatedly confronted with an automated telephone system that wouldn't let me do something not in its normal routine. So take that Space Coyote!