My job should be a sitcom. In today’s (yesterday as this wouldn’t post last night) episode a mentally challenged student, he really is dumb as a box of rocks (can I say that?) brings a puppy to school. His plan is to leave the dog in the car with the windows cracked and food and water on the floor in little dishes. This is his plan – in St. Louis – in August. This puppy is six to sixteen weeks depending on the mystery of breeds, which I think must be Dalmatian and Husky from his coloration and build. A teacher from the nearby school hears the dog barking in the noon hour and alerts me to his presence, he’s only been out there cooking for maybe ten to fifteen minutes.

If we send this student home it will be the last straw and he will probably be expelled, he may be expelled anyway as he has a long way to go before graduation and I just don’t expect that he’ll make it – at least not at this point in his life. Anyway, I try to help and I make a space for the dog in the storeroom, giving it water and walks as I am able throughout the day. This is one of those odd things. It’s not illegal, the dog was actually fine, the dog is of course more fine now, but seriously WTF. The dog is quite cute, cute enough to come home with me. Maybe he just got away…

We are also hiding the dog because this will be easier to explain and deal with as is needed after the dog is gone – so there is a comic layer of subterfuge… which I completely blew when walking the dog around the building and passing in front of the student clinic windows – students and instructors poured out onto Big Bend Blvd. to cuddle the ridiculously named Snoopy. SHHHHHHHHHHHHH you fifteen people, don’t tell anyone I’m hiding a cute puppy. I spent a little while printing out internet advice on how to take care of a dog, and how to prevent heat stroke in said dog, and how not to be a dumb ass with said dog. He wasn’t being intentionally cruel – he just doesn’t know any better and he is not leaving here with that dog without a serious education. (I gave him a packet with several bits highlighted in yellow.

A few months back, after a big storm, a woman came in for a massage and she had several goslings with her in a plastic dog carrier. She wanted to leave the goslings with me while she got her massage. Puppies yes, goslings no, I’m allergic to the feathers. Luckily she had a relative nearby who could watch after the goslings, who had been separated from their mother in said storm. We used to occasionally find ourselves watching the random child until one of them smeared his poop all over the bathroom walls and then locked the door behind him so that his fecophilia went undiscovered for some time. No more fecophilia kids, no more goslings, no more dumb students with dogs in their cars. These little tales are but the tip of the iceberg.